Thinking Too Much
I remember when I was in college my friends told me once in a while that I think too much, I over-intellectualize, etc. etc. My reaction to that is often that people don’t think enough or that there is no such thing as thinking "too much" (In other words, I dismiss such comments casually).
I think I still do think "too much" except I don’t bother anyone anymore with my thoughts except through essays like these and all the other essays I’ve posted on cyberspace. I know I still do because who else would think about writing an essay about thinking too much?
Round about noon today, I realized that people who think too much are people who are trying to figure out the world because they are seeking to obtain a practical mastery of the world through conceptual mastery. The fact that they do not have practical mastery of the world means that they are not of that world.
I guess it’s like language. When you have practical mastery of a language, you know what to say without having to think about it. When you are an outsider to a language, you are not as sure about what it is you are going to say or how to say it.
I think people who think too much think about one of two things. They agonize over ends which they do not fully accept. And/or they agonize because they do not know the means to achieve the ends they want to achieve. In Tagalog, hindi sila marunong dumiskarte. At hindi sila marunong dumiskarte dahil hindi sila babad sa mundong kinabibilangan nila kaya’t pinag-iisipan pa nila kung ano ang tamang diskarte.
Some guys for example, are natural players. They are always on the prowl and in the market without being conscious of what it is they are doing. They manage to attract women sometimes without even intending to. Other guys are hopeless Victorian romantics: thinking too much and short on action and results.
I realize now that thinking too much is (in most cases) not a psychological phenomenon (much less a spiritual phenomenon) as much as it is a social phenomenon. A person who thinks too much is most likely not a nutcase but a social misfit (in a non-judgmental sense of the word misfit).
Therefore, I think people who think too much are best served not by psychologists, psychiatrists or priests but by sociologists (the rare few who make sense of the world in a non-theoretical way), management consultants, image-makers and stylists depending on the field that they are thinking about.
