I want to have an open mind, but not so open that my brain falls out onto the floor. Open-mindedness doesn't mean that I accept as real everything that comes my way. It simply means that I'm willing to hear anything, listen to anyone and genuinely consider everything they have to say in the light of what currently seems to be real to me. I haven't always been so willing to actually think about things. 
    I used to be a very radical, hyper-conservative, fundamentalist religious person who was more interested in just holding on tight to the belief system I had been given as a child and had developed further as an adult than being open to the possibility that scientists just might not actually be lying to us about the nature of reality and the history of life on Earth as I had been told for so long. 
    It is only because of learning how and choosing to actually think for my self, to inquire, to investigate and to research the things of the real world that I have been able to enter into and continue this long journey out of the darkness of an uncritical mind.