Curated Quotes | Making Sense out of Nonsense

As a kid growing up, I've always had certain people in my life that I could have turned too for advise on just about every subject possible. Even to this day I still have those same people in my corner whom I can reach out to for advise.

The lessons and values that I carry today were taught to me by my parents, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and so on. More importantly, my mother and father taught me things that I will be sure to pass down to my children one day. One life lesson in particular came from my Dad, a quote that rings in my ear every time I come into a certain situation.
 
When it came to questions about history and our culture growing up on St. Croix, my Dad is the go to guy. So throughout my middle and high school years, some of the things I was learning in school were in a direct conflict with what my father has taught me over the years. I would sit, listen and learned but when I would go back and ask my Dad about the subject that was in question, he would give me a more detailed explanation that was more practical than what I had previously learned. More importantly, at the end of every lecture, he would always say, "Now that you have both accounts being that there's always two sides to a story, I want you to take what you learned, do your own research and Take The Sense out of the Nonsense."

Looking back, I can say that I have operated on that principle with just about every information I take in but it wasn't until recent years when I started to really understand what he really meant and how to use the principles behind Taking Sense out of Nonsense or as I rephrased it, Making Sense out of Nonsense. The basic principles behind this quotes represents the search for the Truth beneath all of the Lies we are told and the idea that we cannot accept any nonsense in any form, shape or fashion.

In short, you can sum it up as "No Nonsense" but to get a better understanding of the quote, you have to look beyond what the quote says which took me a little while to fully understand. I know it is easy for one to look at this quote immediately think that you cannot get sense out of nonsense but it is far from the truth. One thing that I have learned in life is that in every lie, there is some truth buried somewhere far beneath the surface but you just have to find it.

When my Dad said to Take the Sense out of the Nonsense, he explained the way to do that requires doing 3 things:

1.Listening to Understand

2.Doing Your own Research

3.Coming a Practical Conclusion

Listening To Understand

Listening and understanding what  the next person is telling you is common communication skills but many people sometimes only listen. Not only that, if you are only listening and don't understand, some could be telling you a bold face lie and you will hear it, but you will not be able to detect it.

My Dad understood that very well and also understood that children and even some adults can be gullible and just take what somebody is telling them for face value. It's one thing to listen, but to listen and understand means that you are not accepting what someone tells you as 100% facts. That's why he said after every conversation, do your own research.

Do Your Own Research

Doing your own research is critical because if you don't, like it was said earlier, you would end up taking everything as 100% facts. So to avoid that, you simply start researching the subject on your own whether it is by reading more books, watching documentaries, speaking to people who have first hand knowledge of the subject.

This part of it is not rocket science nor is it an impossible task. As Ice Cube once said, It Is What It Is, and it's just that. Do your own research because it is better to know for yourself the Truth about something than to assume or take someone else account as facts. It is very easy for someone to distort the Truth or even exaggerate the Truth for whatever reasons. Something else that can happen is that if you are getting your information from just one source, sometimes you may only get one side of the issue or story and not the both sides of what is really going on. To really solve any problem or issue, you must be completely aware of everything that is going which means, listening to both side of a story, ask questions, find multiple sources of information hence the phrase, Do Your Own Research. Only then after you have done this, you can start to form your own conclusion.

Come to a Practical Conclusion

Drawing up your own conclusion from all of the information you take in is a critical part of Making Sense out of Nonsense not only because it involves piecing together everything you've learned about a topic or subject, but because in order to piece everything together, you must have a full understanding of the information. 

Assuming that you listened to understand what someone was saying, then following up by doing your own research and checking multiple sources, now you can start to piece together the puzzle. You should now be able to determine whether or not the information you first received was true or false, did it have partial truths or partial lies in between. More importantly, it allows you to think more practical about things so in essence it becomes way easier to find a solution, build your case, put the pieces together, or simply come to a practical conclusion.

In all I think Making Sense out of Nonsense is just a game of critical thinking 
that includes the same steps: 

• Listening to understand is the same as Recognizing the Assumptions
• Doing Your own Research is the same as Evaluating the Arguments
• Coming to a Practical Conclusion is the same as Drawing Conclusions

It's not meant to be a new theory or some type of research paper on Making Sense out of Nonsense, but just a glimpse of a way of thinking that has stayed with me for years, all from a simple phrase. It was originally told to me as a kid by my father as a way to get me to start thinking for myself but more importantly to teach the skills of determining facts from fiction. 

Still using these principles today, the basic idea behind the quote stands for not accepting any nonsense or in short, No Nonsense and even inspired a cool T shirt design and a collection you can check out below!

The "No Nonsense T Shirts" is just one of the few designs within the Sensible Collections Brand that is based on some of the best curated quotes from Lab172. 

Making Sense out of Nonsense all boils down to a constant search for truths  and is just one of the many principles that you can use in your daily life to help you make better decisions and have a better understanding of things you may not fully understand. With that, what are some of your principles and ideals that you use in your everyday life that you may or not be aware of? 

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