What do YOU think ?

You must be wondering why I am asking you this question. You may ask " What do you think about what .." But this is a general question. What do you think about anything. Anything under the sun. The first prerequisite to this would be do you think at all?
In this fast paced world full of social media, social connections and people all around, do you think any thoughts of your own ?

Our minds are constantly bombarded by thoughts and feelings of others: be it via social media, television programs, advertisements and people around us. It is up to us to make sense of all this information overload and make sense of the things and form our own opinions.So your thoughts can definitely be influenced, I mean that's how we evolve and grow. But your decisions should be taken only after due consideration. This is especially true when your decisions affect the lives of your loved ones. For e.g. we hear of kids misusing the internet and BBM and other messengers. So by getting influenced by and without thinking it through, you ban your kids from all sources of internet, TV etc. One may argue that prevention is better than cure. But then by that philosophy, vaccines would not exist now would they ?
By proper and monitored exposure, I am sure you can teach your kids the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. After some time they will be able to distinguish on their own as the human mind is an amazing machine. But if they don't know what is wrong, how will they recognize something when its wrong.

So before doing anything take a minute and think. The human mind is capable of storing millions of  things and using them to decide. Don't let others decide your life and thoughts for you. For then that is the difference between an animal in the zoo and one in the Jungle. The former gets food and glances but cannot decide anything and can nothing but stay behind bars and let the zoo keepers decide when they walk and sleep and eat.
Ah! But the ones in the wild. They are free to make their own mistakes and learn and adapt. They can decide for themselves whether they want to walk or sleep or even if they want to eat. That my dear readers is true freedom. Freedom to think. As a very famous poem by Rabrindranath Tagore and I quote ,
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free
 Where the world has not been broken up into fragments,
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. "

I would like to replace the word country with "MIND".
Let me know what you think!