Eventhough I’m in the game for five years now, it still amazes me how much trouble the beginning of term always means. It used to be stressfull before I started to work three jobs. Now it’s maniac. Every schedule I prepared in advance got canceld or changed around. I’m lucky to be able to keep my seminars. While usually, things tend to turn worse, this time my schedules improved, though.
I even missed out on my literary sunday, which is why I’dlike to provide some compensation, a line from Extremely loud and incredibly close by Jonathan Safran Foer, which I’m reading for some distraction from the university related reading load. And yes I am that crazy, trying to relax from reading by simply reading something else.
I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.
Now, while that seems to be an incredibly sad line, it also is very insightful. How often do we tend to think too much? This decision that we just can’t make because there is this or that fact that is still uncertain and MIGHT turn out a tad negative, the crazy dress we love but can’t wear because we think to much about what someone else might think about it, the relationship that is awesome, but forces us to look for it’s downside, because things that seem to be flawless usually never come without hidden problems, right?
While not to think at all and always go with your instincts or whatever it is that leads your decisions, is certainly not what I’d advise, sometimes, we need to take a step back. Sometimes, we just need to act instead of pondering for hours and days and weeks and month. Thinking does not always make you happier. Thinking too far ahead, to deeply or in too complicated ways often makes us discover problems that are basically just born by the process of thinking itself. Once we found a flaw with something we loved or enjoyed, it loses it’s glamour and will never be the same again. Certain things are there to be enjoyed. Full stop.
Of course, you can also look at things from a different angle. Too often, our thinking is directed towards negative thoughts. Or at least, it’s meant to solve a problem. Only rarely do we take time to sit back and ponder happy times. Think about little things that made us smile, or try to find out what could get us laughing imidiately within the next minutes. To direct our thoughts into more positive directions and let the process of enjoying happy thoughts become a routine might be a strategy worth pursuing.
To think is a rather natural process and nonetheless a seriously complicated business. To find a balance between over-thinking things and being careless is a true form of art.
How do you keep yourself from falling into the thinking-things-to-pieces trap?
