TTT

At the start of my sophomore year of high school I was assigned to read a book for biology entitled, Thinking Things Through. It served as a basic study skills book to teach students how to approach complex problems. I barely picked it up.
In my reading of Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen Days, in which he gives an accurate report of the events leading to and eventually the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis I found that my thinking mirrors his. Of course I have had the luxury to study the Cuban Missile Crisis and so I already knew how it would end and why the decisions made by the Ex Comm and eventually the President were the correct ones for the situation. However, I find that many of the questions posed by the Kennedy Brothers is similar to the questions I ask myself in any confrontation or issue that arises. Of course, I've never had the fate of the world on my conscience so the decisions I have made come to me easier and their repercussions far less grave. After all, the only decisions I've made have ever only affect my life and those around me. Yet, I never take for granted that what I do affects those around me. I only mean to say that I've never had world changing decisions to make.
For whatever reason I was struck by the arguments made by RFK in the closing chapters of the work that ask us to look at problems from the other side. I feel that all too often we hold strong to our opinions and never consider what the opposition might see.