I sat down in a reflective mood some weeks ago and a question popped into my mind: “What does it mean to think?”

The question seemed intuitive and very simple to answer, and that was one of the problems. The simplicity didn’t come from a system of walking through complexity; it came from not applying enough mental effort to arrive at an answer. The second problem was that I had an idea in my head, but I couldn’t communicate it - not even to myself.

Days later I decided to go down the rabbit hole and do the mental work it should have taken to find an answer. I discovered something that will forever change how I view the human mind. To show you what I found, let’s meet two members of the same family: Kehinde Ajasa and TAIWO Ajasa. These two are identical twins in every respect. They are so alike that only they themselves can tell each other apart.

One day, while conversing, Kehinde raised a premise: Kehinde: “Professors are poor.” TAIWO, hearing that, became intrigued. He listened but did not agree. TAIWO: “What do you mean by ‘poor’?” Kehinde began defining “poor,” providing multiple contexts and arguing that with the knowledge a professor has, they should not end up poor. TAIWO: “Being underpaid doesn’t automatically mean being poor.” Kehinde: “But if a person is underpaid long enough, they can end up poor.”

The conversation continued, point and counterpoint, until Kehinde finally admitted: “You’re right. My premise was too generalized.”

And so the conversation ended. The goal of that exchange was to start from a premise and develop minor premises until everything led back to either the original claim or a revised form of it.

The human mind is wired in a way that it’s possible to hear “voices” in our head. One voice may affirm something while another questions it. To some degree, this suggests that humans can create multiple “individuals” inside their minds. What if I told you that the conversation between Kehinde and TAIWO is the definition of thinking?

Here, the main mind is Ajasa. The identical twins, Kehinde and TAIWO, are the “created” voices inside Ajasa’s mind. The initial thought Ajasa had was “Professors are poor,” voiced by his main self, Kehinde. However, he needed an anti-believer — the creation of TAIWO. The conversation between the two, which led Kehinde (the main self) to a conclusion, is thinking.

Therefore, to think is the process of communicating with different created entities in your mind about a subject — using multiple thoughts that are questioned to form other thoughts, creating a logical chain that leads to a refined form of the original idea. It’s one thing to have a thought; it’s another to think. Here is what it means to think: don’t only have a thought, make sure you truly think.

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