Thinking - a sin?

With a few requests to resume my blog.. here I am, back again.

My latest line of inquiry has been about thinking.

I'm often told that I think too much. As one friend, a hypoglycemic, put it, "Your thought process is faster than my metabolism."

As a direct result of my so-called over-thinking, I pay a lot of attention to a lot of detail. I notice things about people or events, and think about why they did it, why it happened, how they got there and such. So when the lady standing across from me on the bus is fidgeting with her shopping bag, smiling to herself and gazing out the window, I think: "She went to Sainsbury's. She's having a good day. Is she looking at herself? Maybe she lost some weight. Or maybe she's happy that she got all her chores done. Or she's looking forward to a good weekend, perhaps even a trip. I wonder where she's going. Where's she from? She looks eastern European." And off it goes, my brain.

But a moment's thought should reveal to anyone that everything - absolutely everything - originates first in thought. The begging question, therefore, comes down to this: We have brains, so is it a sin to use it?

I'm thinking things when people do or say things that involve me. Compounded by all the thinking I casually do on a daily basis, I've naturally built a sort of databank in my head of all the things people say or do in reaction to something. Hence, I don't simply speculate on explanations when something happens; I have a fairly informed guesstimate, borne out of hours and years of observing, thinking, and remembering.

But really, I make it sound more complicated and extraordinary than it actually is. Most people, in fact probably everyone, does this. Some people just don't actively think that they're doing it - the whole observing, thinking, remembering - whereas I do.

There are consequences, however; just as there are consequences for everything else. Sometimes, if you're not careful, you think so far into the future that you feel either hopeless, lost, confused with life and anxious at the endless possibilities and by proxy, uncertainties. Other times, you think through things so quickly and thoroughly - and no less for those around you - that you get frustrated that such thoughts aren't given to you in return. By reaction, the people around you get nervous that they're going to miss out on something you'd thought of already, and vice versa. And for most people - those of us who aren't such active think-a-holics - it just might get damn annoying that the Thinker is always thinking, and it's like a piece of elastic ready to snap any second.

I don't really like holding to a romanticised notion of the past (like the way way past), but life must've certainly been less jumbled with information, interaction, and matter. Nowadays, there's tonnes of subjects one could ponder about, and we're not left to ever 'not think', other than maybe within the hour or two of yoga classes. And even then, it's hard.

Thinking, though, isn't all bad. I, for one, think it makes me a pretty considerate person. I can think comfortably in advance and plan ahead. Planning ahead, in fact, comes to me like second nature. It's effortless and easy. Thinking also makes me more articulate about things. Because it's almost like you're constantly talking to yourself, you find ways to word things, to express them and make them more descriptive or less sensational, depending on your needs.

And of course, someone who doesn't think wouldn't blog like this!