Backfire Called Over-thinking

I remember a joke read long back:

A sardar asked his son:

“How was your English test?”

“It was easy except for one bit: Past Participle form of the word think is _________,” said the son.

“What did you write?”

“I thought, thought, thought for a long time and then wrote thunk,” answered the genius son.

*****

Don’t think too much if you didn’t understand the joke; it was just about a strange disorder called over-thinking.

Let’s look at a set of statements:

Time is very sensitive. What if I catch cold, let me close the window. Life is very uncertain. What if I lose my job tomorrow, let me start saving money as much as I can. World is very bad. What if my children get into bad company and learn bad practices, let me not let them go out so much. People are too exploitive. What if they start borrowing money if I get closer to them, let me maintain some distance. Body is too vulnerable to diseases and infections, let me not eat or drink water outside.

The lines above are about a strange mental state called worrying.

We come across many people (sometimes including ourselves) who over-think or worry. Over-thinking in its correct form is just ‘thinking’ which is the root of human evolution. But over-thinking is a backfire. Same is the case with over-worrying. When it is in the right amount, it is called ‘precariousness’ or just ‘being careful before something adverse happens’, but when it goes to extremes, it becomes ‘worrying’.

Over-thinking is mostly related to intelligence and over-worrying can be intellectual or emotional. Whatsoever, both are the unwanted children of our thought process.

What’s wrong if we over-think?

Let me drive this with an analogy of filling a bucket with water. Assume that an empty bucket is a problem or a life’s situation. Filling water is ‘thinking’. The bucket has a finite capacity and so are the problems that need finite attention and thinking. What happens if we keep filling water even after the bucket is full? Water spills out. That’s exactly how over-thinking works. There’s no use; indeed it’s wasteful or a loss. Every problem, every issue, every concern, every unexpected situation in life needs just finite level of thinking. Anything that we overdo starts acting against us.

Another problem with over-thinking is not acting towards the solution. Thinking should stop at right time and action (towards solution) should start from that point. But if we keep thinking even after crossing the required level, we are wasting time and not moving towards solution.

It may sound strange but over-thinking becomes a part of our personality if we do not identify and stop it. The most challenging part is to identify the stop spot. It is difficult to find where to stop thinking. If it is considerably a bigger problem or a decision to take, it is always good to draw a flow chart of your thoughts on a paper in the form of Possibilities/Plans and their pros and cons. If I follow Plan A, what are the challenges and what are the conveniences? Similarly for plan B. Then check doable actions and assign priorities. If we have to gain or lose something out of available options, what it should be. By writing it on a paper (or any other media), we see an end point for thinking. Then start acting on your plan.

Sometimes even the small matters provoke us to over-think. They become worries. A mother starts thinking hard if her daughter doesn’t return home on time. Did she miss the bus or her bike break down? Did she get any unexpected work? She could have made a call. Has her phone’s battery got drained? Maybe network issues? – All this flow of thoughts sounds okay. If her arrival still gets delayed, thoughts get converted into worries. Accident? Any undesired act while passing through remote places? Worries start sounding like strong possibilities. It’s always good not to wait until our over-thinking gets converted into worries. Once we cross that borderline, our thought process goes out of logic track. The only way to get out of that phase is two-line mantra: Stop worrying. Start acting. Although it may sound like a consoling saying, but in such situations, it’s always good to tell ourselves ‘No news is good news’.

The stupidest part is assumptive worry. Well, in fact, all the worries are just assumptions without factual information. But some worries are totally needless. Packing some paracetamol tablets while going on a trip is fine. That’s precaution. But do we take a physician along with us? That’s worrying. No everything can be planned in life. Sometimes we have to act spontaneously. Look at a funny story:

A newly married man invited his colleagues for lunch assuming that his wife cooks well. When he informed previous night, she told that she knows nothing except cooking lemon rice.

They made a plan. He told his wife “Well, you prepare only lemon rice. But when they come for lunch, just keep dropping empty vessels one after the other in the kitchen. From the dining hall, I keep asking what fell down. Every time keep telling a dish slipped out of your hand. At last I will ask what is left. You just tell lemon rice. I will pretend to be angry and ask you to serve the same.’

The plan sounded great.

Next day, when his colleagues arrived, the couple was about to start the drama. As planned, he heard the sound of a dropping vessel.

He asked ‘What’s that?’

To his shock, his wife said in confusion ‘Please come here.’

When he went inside, he saw that the vessel with lemon rice had indeed fallen down.

*****

Not everything goes as we plan even with utmost precaution. It’s foolish to worry that drinking tap water would cause infection even when food is choked in throat when bottled water is not available nearby. It’s stupid to lose the joy of getting drenched in rain worrying that we may catch cold. Life’s tasteless if we worry too much and keep ourselves away from street food once in a while with the fear of adding cholesterol to our veins. It’s insane to worry that the prices would hike and we may not be able to build a house after some years and then start building a house, taking a heavy home loan and paying EMIs for next hundred years of your life.

It's okay to think and even worry for the true problems or suffering that exists. But it’s sheer foolishness to over-think and worry for something that is far unlikely to happen. It’s stupidity to drive away the existing happiness and invite suffering. Wisdom is all about seeing those lines between carelessness and over-precariousness, between thinking and overthinking. Some lines appear to our inner eyes. Some lines can be seen through spectacles of others experience. Sometimes we cross the line and get the sight. Today's problems will become tomorrow's jokes. Today's worries will be tomorrow's pastime fun. Life gets life when we realize it's not worth taking so seriously.