My door is open to anything, but not anything can get in

Aristotle said that it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Is is good, and I think very important, to listen with an open mind to the things you hear (or read). But, also to be open to all the possible things you're NOT hearing or reading. What I mean is, always try to stretch your mind to the things that may be missing from the subject at hand.

I used to have such a narrow, gullible mind. I didn't know what skepticism meant beyond the narrow understanding that it was to refuse to believe whatever you hear. I certainly would experience confusing thoughts and feelings when contradicting evidence would eventually find its way to my view, but I didn't know how to defend myself from being carried about by every wind of thought.

Perhaps the most enlightening experience that shifted my course for perception was the summer I spent selling pest control door to door in southern California. During that time, I learned of tactics in rhetoric to make things seem better or grander than they really are. I learned how, through rhetoric, truth could be stretched to virtual lies, while still retaining it's apparent (though near-transparent) "truth" essence. I learned how you could choose to say only true positive things, yet block out true negative things and thus give a potential false perception of product (ideas can be products, too, you know).

Following this experience, I returned home with an extremely heightened sense of true skepticism - not to accept at face value. Though still endowed with a tendency to believe, I no longer was so easily swayed, for every ad on television, any attempt at persuasion for goods or services or ideas or beliefs, immediately bore the resemblance of the product I tried to sell that summer and how I knew it could be masked. Nowadays, I hear something and I'm likely to quickly think "you say this about such and such, but you're not saying whether this or that!" and I find possible exclusions or omissions of detail.

The value of this skill is immeasurable, for I've come to appreciate deeply the fact that there is more to something than what you see at face value more often than not.

Another, more formal definition of skepticism is a questioning nature. Always be questioning. What aspects are not being addressed? What truths are possible being concealed? Knowing what questions to ask would have been improbable if not impossible for me had I not had first hand experience at inventing the disguises myself, or witnessing their inception and employment by my colleagues.

This is a true skeptic, or liberal-minded person, one who attempts to arrive at more truth than may possibly be presented. If a person always holds on to the thought of "there may be more to know or understand about this," that person places him/herself on a path of ever-increasing enlightenment.