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Reacting, Replying, and Responding
The different ways of answering
NOTE: This is a work in progress, and I welcome constructive input.
Someone said something. People say things all the time. What was said may have been addressed to you or to someone else, but you heard or read it. Now you have an opportunity to choose to ignore what was said or to answer it in some way.
Three Different Ways to Answer
To every situation you have three basic approaches. You have the free will to choose, including the free will to give away your free will.
React
I don’t know if they still do it, but when I was a kid, the physician would take a little mallet and hit me just above the knee to test my reflexes. If my leg twitched, that was good. Physicians probably don’t do that nowadays; to test bodily reflexes, the medical device industry probably sells a $5,000 machine to replace the $5 little mallet. Progress.
Anyway, the point is that we have certain basic physical reactions to external stimuli. If something is hurtling toward our head, we instinctively throw up our arms to protect ourselves. Such reactions are self-protective instincts that we’ve developed to ensure our health and survival — such as our basic fight or flight response.
