bramblepatch:

nikolaecuza:

danosaurs-and-philions:

im a bad person who thinks bad thoughts like ‘ew what is that girl wearing’ and then remember that im supposed to be positive about all things and then think ‘no she can wear what she wants, fuck what other people say damn girl u look fabulous’ and im just a teeny bit hypocritical tbh

I was always taught by my mother, That the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next defines who you are.

The Tiffany Aching books (a sub-series of the Discworld books) call this your First and Second Thoughts.

Your First Thoughts are your surface thoughts; they’re the thoughts that are particularly susceptible to snap judgments and “everyone knows” logic, because they’re the thoughts you think before you have time to think about what you’re thinking. Everyone’s got First Thoughts, and some people rely on them pretty exclusively because it’s easy. “Ew what is that girl wearing,” is a First Thought.

Second Thoughts are thoughts about your First Thoughts. They’re the level where you separate what “everyone knows” from what you know, and discard the ideas that are popular but not true before you can act on them and cause further harm. "She can wear what she wants,“ is a Second Thought. In the books, Tiffany’s ability to listen to her Second Thoughts is frequently, explicitly referenced as being vital to her ability to wield the power, and handle the responsibility, of witchcraft. (This along with her First Sight, or ability to see what’s really there instead of what she expects to see.)

(There’s also Third Thoughts, which are the next level deeper, but they’re trickier and more subtle, because there’s only so much of that kind of recursion that most people can consciously keep track of. In this case, “I’m a teeny bit hypocritical,” is probably a Third Thought.)