By now, you’re probably getting on with thinking about life’s difficult questions in your own way, or, at least, you’ve learned to pace a floor properly.

I have to admit that the internet has greatly reduced my pacing. Back in the 1980s, when I was attending Palomar Community College, I would pace up to three or four hours a night. One time, some friends drove up to the apartment building where I lived. They watched as I would appear in the sliding glass door at regular intervals. This scared them and they left without knocking, which was a good thing because I’m sure it would have interrupted my thinking.

Once you’ve learned to start thinking for yourself, you might become a bit frightened. A whole world of possibilities opens up and you don’t have any book, religion, philosophy, guru, or PR person to tell you what to think. You have to decide for yourself.

On the plus side, you no longer fall prey to phishing scams and other emails that promise you certain beneficial gains if you buy their products. This alone frees up quite a bit of your time, time that is better spent pacing.

Or perhaps you’re having trouble getting your mind around a large concept like the meaning of life or whether God exists. That’s okay. Drop those bigger questions for now and focus on something closer to home.

Pick up the local paper (if it still exists) and find an editorial. Read it. Don’t make a judgement. Just read it several times. Find the main point that the writer is trying to make. Regardless of your own thoughts or feelings on the subject matter, take the opposite view. Think about how you would frame a disagreement with this person’s editorial.

Go read the comics page and lament how lame they are these days.

I hope you didn’t do that because you should be thinking for yourself. More pacing if you even thought about it.

Next topic: how not to get sucked into an online forum.

You’re tired of the blather. It’s all somebody else’s view. You want to break out on your own. You want to think for yourself. But how do you get started?

First, tell yourself that you don’t have any answers. You don’t know anything. You don’t have any strong beliefs. If you go into this thinking you have the answer, you can’t think for yourself. All your cherished beliefs–toss ‘em.

Next, start with a basic question, a general question. Let’s take “What is the meaning of life?”

If your first thought has anything to do with religion, go back to step one. This isn’t about pursuing a question through any religious belief system, it’s about pursuing a question from your own experience.

You have to break the question down and assign your own meaning to each section. Start with the word “life.” In this case, it’s best to go with what you know, which is your own life.

Next, how are you going to approach meaning? You might assign it the definition of a purpose, a goal, or a final destination. The key here is not to stick with one definition. You’re going to have to try different methods.

You’re going to have to spend several hours a day thinking about this question and working through all the possibilities. You have to tell yourself that you will never know the answer to the question, but that, over time, you can come to a conclusion that best fits your needs.

You should mull this question over for days or even weeks once you have your terms defined. You don’t need to do any research or read any articles. Dig deep. Tune out other sources but don’t be afraid to bring the question up with other people, preferably not family or close friends.

Don’t talk about it when you are drunk.

Find answers that make you the most uncomfortable and spend the most time exploring their possibilities.

Learn how to pace a floor.

If you can’t spend two hours pacing (pee breaks allowed) mulling over a simple philosophical question, then you can’t think for yourself. Two hours of Google searching is not an equivalent to two hours of looking inside yourself.

If you finally come up with an answer, one that pops up and seems to fit perfectly within your life, you’re lying to yourself and should probably resort to self-flagellation.

Now, stop thinking about this question. If you’ve really given it thought, a suitable answer will present itself in time.