You Think Too Much

A friend of mine said it flat out the other day: "You think too much." Fair enough. Maybe I do. All that turning things over in my head tends to drain the life out of a moment before I've even lived it. I suspect some of it traces back to hearing "What did you do that for?" one too many times growing up. And part of it is this habit I have of standing at every fork in the road, weighing the choice, bracing for the version of me who regrets it later.

Restaurants are the worst for this. When I'm eating with someone, I'll scan the menu convinced that whatever they order will turn out to be the better call, and I'll sit there wishing I'd picked that instead. So I stall. The waiter comes back twice. Everyone at the table has decided, and they're all looking at me.

There used to be a tidy clinical word for this kind of person: neurotic. The old definition was someone whose own behavior troubles them, someone who carries psychological pain about what they're about to do or have already done. Guilt, worry, anxiety, shame. These are the emotions that keep a person feeling rotten while the actual problem underneath goes untouched. They can make you pause and reconsider before you act, which cuts both ways. Sometimes the pause saves you. Sometimes it just traps you.

There's a middle path, like there usually is. On one side you've got the impulsive types, the pleasure-chasers, the occasional person with no conscience at all, acting first and sorting out the consequences never. On the other side there's me, knotting myself up in what-ifs until no decision gets made. And refusing to decide is still a decision. You chose the turmoil. Both ends of the spectrum end up working against you.

Someone wrote to me after reading this, saying she'd spent more than a year unable to commit to one big choice, quietly suffering in the doubt. She finally made the call this week. Teaching an English lesson that same day, she heard herself tell the class: life is a chain of mistakes, the mistakes are the stepping stones, and making them is proof you're still alive, so ease up and enjoy it.