I knew what to do, and yet, I stayed where the thinking was.
It began as a simple idea
Just the other day I found myself overwhelmed by anxiety as a friend had challenged me to spread joy in the world by enrolling 10 perfect strangers into a random conga line.
My natural response to anxiety is to brainstorm how to accomplish the thing which is the cause of the anxiety, so I thought I’ll go to a place with a ton of people and maybe I’ll talk to some of them and tell them about this challenge or maybe I’ll just channel all of my charisma into this spontaneous celebration and somehow just collectively drum up the conga line.
As I drove to a shopping center, my mind became flooded with all the possibilities of what might happen and what others might think of me and what if I couldn’t complete the challenge, and I became so locked up in the multiplicity of thought I was unable to get out of the car at my destination.
So now I needed to brainstorm a new place.
This went on and on, a new destination which led to a new plan and new thoughts and then being locked up in anxiety again only to go to a new destination to think a new thought.
It felt as if I was making movement and working towards a solution, but it was simply the same thought repeated in a new form: what will others think of me?
Something starts to loop
This is overthinking, but the term seems slightly off as over implies an excess of thoughts, when it is simply the same thought repeated without end and ultimately divorcing me from participating in life.
Most of us believe that overthinking is this result of an excessive amount of thoughts or too much attention and analysis given to what should be simple, like talking to a stranger or a group of people.
If we hold this definition, then the solution to overthinking becomes the Nike slogan of just do it, or even more confusingly, to picture everyone naked or somehow stand outside my experience in my imagination, to distract myself.
As we all know, none of this works.
Too much thinking simply isn’t the problem; it’s the fact that thinking has become the place you retreat to when you can’t face what is already here.
Thinking oftentimes can feel like doing. I mean, I felt like I was accomplishing something when I was brainstorming ideas of how to complete my random conga line.
We are taught culturally to prioritize thinking as a mark of intelligence. It feels like responsibility, and that we’re doing the right thing by taking our time and considering every option so that we don’t make a mistake.
It is true that in thinking and considering all the options, we are avoiding reacting impulsively or rushing through everything, which would likely lead to a mistake. We are simply trying to get it right.
Functionally, though, since life isn’t a math problem, thinking in these instances is, in fact, creating something else; rather than moving us closer to a decision, it is actually keeping us from one.
It feels like movement
Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century philosopher and theologian, makes the simple observation in his unfinished work Pensees that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
I’ve always felt as if this line is read too literally, as if he were recommending meditation or solitude, whereas given the rest of the Pensees, it seems to be more in line with our constant seeking of distraction so as not to look at ourselves directly.
He seems to be saying that we are constantly seeking diversion and distraction rather than just being with the uncertainty of the here and now.
A major current running through his thought is how we are both capable of understanding the universe and yet still not being able to, and how we are capable of the most beautiful and splendid moments and are also fragile and full of resentment and conflict.
The mind takes over the moment
In the Four Quartets, Eliot writes that we are “distracted from distraction by distraction,” and that feels to me to capture the Pascal idea perfectly. For Pascal, this leads to all the problems inherent in our condition.
Thinking for him, like a lot of life, is both a blessing and a curse, as it is something that can create direct experience with the world just as it can be used as a defense or a distraction.
Distraction is not simply something we use to amuse ourselves, but it is the fundamental way we divorce ourselves from what is already present.
The modern connotations to the word distraction imply something external, like a video game or seeking attention from the opposite sex to escape from ourselves, but it also applies to those things so deeply internal as to have always been with us, our voice in our heads interpreting our experience.
It can also look structured and diligent, like when we sit down to figure something out, spending hours creating pros and cons lists and planning just how we will accomplish something. Rather than this moving us closer to what is already present in our lives, it simply creates more distance.
There is no resolution to this thinking.
This is exactly what was happening to me in my car.
It really looked as if I were solving some sort of problem, but I was simply moving away from the moment where I would have to get out of the car and actually face another human being. With each new thought or plan, it felt as if I were moving closer to completion, but the structure of those thoughts stayed the same. I was avoiding being seen, avoiding what was already present in my life.
Then something shifts
What Pascal saw, and what I was living in that moment, is that the difficulty is never in the actual situation itself, but with staying in the actual situation, what is already present, rather than fleeing from it into a better thought or an idealized version of what might happen.
It is the inherent uncertainty of the situation and our attempts to bridge this uncertainty that creates the difficulty.
Thinking and planning inside the car wasn’t an attempt to gain a greater understanding of the situation; it was simply to avoid exposure, to avoid being seen or judged, and thus thinking allowed me to circle the situation and remain outside of it rather than encountering what was already present.
I eventually stepped out of the thinking and out of the distraction and engaged intimately with life in the present moment, with the what is.
I enrolled 17 random strangers into a spontaneous conga line, and created an immense amount of joy and wonder in doing so.
Where in your life do you already know what to do, but remain in thought?
Dr. Samuel Gilpin is a poet and essayist working at the point where language meets experience, where words are not used to explain life, but to enter it more honestly. At samuelgilpin.com, he writes for those who feel the quiet pressure to fix themselves, offering a different approach: not optimization, but a return to what has been covered over or pushed aside. He holds a PhD in English Literature, but his work moves away from analysis toward something more direct, reading and writing as a way of loosening what has become too tight. When he’s not writing, he’s returning to Four Quartets, rewatching The Wire, or lifting weights.