When I was in college I had this one professor (yes, one of those professors) whose way of communicating totally eluded me. I would think that I understood the instructions of an assignment only to come in the next week and be totally blind-sided that I’d missed the mark.

When I approached her about it, she said she refused to “spoon feed” students. I was very triggered by that! I was NOT asking to be spoon-fed! Simple, clear expectations was all, not constantly moving goal posts. Can you tell I’m still a little triggered?

That term, “spoon-fed”, stuck with me. Now, I see it often in people. So many do want to be spoon-fed. They don’t want to think for themselves, not objectively anyway. The majority is fueled by emotion, not study, research or even rationale. They will form an opinion based on what makes them feel good and will defend that opinion until blood is drawn.

What it really comes down to is pride. They want to be right, to be the smartest, to be the most successful, to have the most followers…they want to be above others in some way. Pride and ego.

I was driven by pride when I dealt with that professor. I was used to being in the top tier of my class and she was messing with my status. It’s easy to see that now. Her pride was bruised, too, when I confronted her since she saw herself as a model professor. And, of course, none of it matters in the least when I step back and look at it objectively.

What does matter a great deal is how this attitude is enveloping and hurting us as a society. People are so quick to bark and bite in defense of a mere opinion based on something they have been spoon-fed. To be clear, my definition of “spoon-fed” is the deliberate choice to believe a single source of information or a single point of view without consideration of other possibilities.

Keyboard wars are fought over and over every day in the name of spoon-feeding! My advice, if you want it, is to drop your spoon and get out of the bowl. It’s slippery and it’s a trap!

Nothing is what it seems. Absolutely nothing. Go out and seek the truth for yourself, and I mean really dig in and seek it, because it certainly won’t be served to you.

And it especially won’t be found in the sources you’ve been taught to trust.