Thinking too much...it's something I've been accused of a lot in my lifetime. The first time I remember being told I let my brain do too much wandering and exploring was when I was in kindergarten, and it was cold outside.
Let it be said that I hate the cold. Anything under forty degrees and I practically refuse to leave the heated building I am so fortunate to call home.
Anyway, I was in kindergarten and my teacher, who I can't remember the name of, but who worked at Target and always gave me an employee discount when I went to buy barretes on sale, told me to put on my snow suit and go outside. I, instead of putting on the cushy onesie, looked at her and said (apparently), "No, I don't like the cold, and I don't want to go outside. I want to play inside." My teacher...I think her name started with an 'R' the more I think about it, told me that I had to go outside or keep learning. It's no surprise to me that I chose to stay inside. So I learned how to read. That whole entire kindergarten winter Ms. R taught me how to read while my friends would go outside into the frigid Chicago winter amidst the blackened city snow and play dodgeball. I don't regret a single second.
My brother, though, told me around that age that I analyzed things too much. I thought that was stupid at the time. Probably because as a six year old, I thought my brother was the stupidest person ever to exist. What six year old doesn't? Except for when he chased down those bullies with the double-gallon Super Soakers, he seemed to live to steal my stuffed animals and play nothing but Hootie and the Blowfish too loudly. So there was my prognosis as given by my then fourteen year old brother, I analyzed too much.
Dear God, if I analyzed too much at the age of six, what kind of malcontent am I now?
But it's true, I do. I just finished rereading High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, which centers around Rob Fleming, who is a classic over-analyzer. I really relate to him. There is a quote in that book that resounds with me.
"It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, and you're compelled to start it all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional thing all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid, relationship."
I mean, holy cow, I pick away at little details in life constantly. And maybe that's the curse of our modern world; we have too much to pick away at and too much time to do it in. I spend a good chunk of my time reading about people who live in extremes, or listening to songs about extremes. I don't know if I've ever heard a song with these lyrics:
Life's up and down/ It's all right/ I met a guy last night/ The conversation was vaguely awkward over one too many beers/ That I drank just to loosen the mood/ We went dutch to show that we didn't want too much commitment/ When we held hands it was sweaty/ Conversation was about what we had in common/ Which didn't seem to matter/ I'm out ten bucks and whatever a medium latte costs
Granted, if there was a song with those lyrics, it should be resigned to the Land of Horrible Lyricists, but you get the idea. The poor unfortunate over-thinkers, those who spend the time reading and listening and creating, want everything to be as fulfilling as those few brilliant moments we find the right notes and the right words. And those notes stay there. Those words stay there. They are, in a sense, eternal. No one is going to come round and flick those notes from the song we wrote, or delete the words that we typed (unless you have a real, professional editor). I think everyone has this; their momentary high. And many, including me, just want that high to go on. Because that's what feels so darn right, that sense of completion and fulfillment.
Unlike in real human relationships, where in one moment a person can leave and make you feel like everything you worked at was just not quite enough. Or, arguably worse since it's not extreme, you can fall into life's ho-hum routine and look around one morning and think, "crap, what am I doing?" Control has been lost to the everyday cycle, an ancient, boring rhythm that traps us. All the excitement of a relationship can be sucked out, friendships can become only safety nets, and what was once fulfilling work can be only something to do during the day.
When we (I) try to live in extremes, it ends up feeling like we're (I'm) failing most of the time, because real life doesn't happen in extremes. It happens in the small, satisfactory moments of the day. Waking up on time, the end of a long run when your legs feel like they don't particularly care to observe the laws of gravity, at the last sentence of a book when the last word resonates like a bell ringing, or the blissful hour spent in the company of an album that stirs your bowels. Not so extreme, but certainly nice.
Yes, I over-analyze. I admit it. I pick things, and people, apart into bite-size pieces because I can't seem to handle too much. But the only cure I can possibly imagine is what I mentioned above; not letting my momentary highs get in the way of human experience. So I can actually experience what it is to be human, as so many have been trying to do since Adam first clubbed a Mastodon. Let's try it out, yes?
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