He is the person that has most influenced in my thinking

The person that influence me the most in my thinking. Hermm, this is an interesting topic, but since this is my first blog so why not I introduce myself first before we get into this topic?

Hello everybody, my name is Yap Zi Jian, currently studying actuarial science in UTAR SgLong. 

I will call myself an introvert(and a lot of people agree with this), a person that like to think a lot but not speak much, this can be an disadvantage when I need to communicate with people. A communication that involve one or more introvert is like an invisible wall between the listener and speaker, because I found myself usually listen to other but don't really like to give feedback to the speaker. Everything happens for a reason. I believe there is a main reason why I become the person who I am now. 

Although there are quite a number of people that have a huge impact to my thinking, my father play the main role to "structure" my way of thinking. How he influence me?

1. His philosophy 

My father is a thinker, but he is also a talker. He like to share his knowledge with family, and he always convince us to adapt his idea. He has his own way to think about people or the society's motivation. For an example, we saw a person is begging for money. He able to relate this situation with the hidden agency that control beggar, how the person behind this this use the empathy of the society to earn their profit, how this situation effect our society and how our behavior help this situation to grow. I can't say I agree with everything he say, but at the same time I cannot prove that it is wrong. His ways of thinking slowly affect my way of thinking.

2. His extreme belief

As I mention just now, we cannot prove that his idea is completely wrong or right, this cause him has a false feeling to believe that most of his thoughts are correct. He will talk about something he don't really understand and come out with some ideas, and most of it are in fact stereotype. This is when I start to realize that I cannot believe everything I heard from people and seen from my eyes. For an example, topic related to gay and lesbian. He had a negative thoughts about people that fall in love with other people that have the same sex. He despises gay and lesbian for several reasons, such as culture, norm, "moral" and the impact of gay and lesbian to our society. In fact, his idea is too extreme and sometime I cannot withstand his idea. I knew friends that are gay and lesbian that are nice to me and they are not as terrible as what my father think. Gay and lesbian are just normal person as you and I. I knew things that he don't understand and I will learn things he don't bother to care. This help me to develop my own thinking skill. Because even the wisest person might have wrong perspective about topic they don't understand. 

3. His stubborn

My father always stick to his thoughts and fail to listen to others. When different way of thinking between my father and I collide, argument happened and most of the time it will not end up well. For example, after the case MH370 happened, we had an "interesting" discussion about who suffer the most in this situation. He said that the family suffer the most, and he came out with his reasons. I didn't agree with him, I said that the passengers suffer the pain that we will not understand (ps: I didn say the family will not in pain). This become the worst topic we ever discussed and we ended up not talking with each others for few days. I started to realize that, if a person don't agree with your idea, that person might not change his way of thinking for the rest of life, no matter how you persuade him. But if you believe that he is wrong, you can choose not to argue with him, but you need to believe in yourself that your belief is correct. 

My father taught me thinking skills, directly or indirectly. No one have such huge impact on my thinking skill like how my father did. His wisdom, his extreme and his stubborn contributed a lot on my critical thinking skill.

Who influence you the most in your thinking? Comment below to let me know!