Thinking the Substance Out

While speaking with a friend of mine earlier this week, this was a question posed to me..."Have you ever thought the substance out of something?" After thinking about it, I decided I had done that before, given that my brain doesn't seem to shut down or idle all that much, especially re: things that are important to me. I told my buddy that that was so good, I had to write it down, and that if I ever used it in a book, I'd give him proper credit. After all, it sounds like a fine opening line for a book, in the finest "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" tradition.

After some more thought, I've figured out exactly what he meant by that question. Too much thought is akin to using a chainsaw on a dandelion in the yard...overkill at its worst. It's a good thing to take a hard look at things from every perspective you can find, hopefully finding angles you never saw before in the process. The problem comes when you take something apart and put it back together so many times that it bears no resemblance to what it was when you started thinking about it, nor is it necessarily grounded in reality any longer.

Worse yet, I saw a Tom and Jerry cartoon once where Tom had broken the same vase several times trying to catch the mouse, and the last time it fell, instead of breaking into pieces, it turned into a fine powder and blew away in the breeze. With excessive overanalysis, that's the risk you run...outthinking yourself and reality, thereby messing things up one too many times and having it blow away and out of your life forever.

The moral of the story, kids: it's fine to think deeply about things, but when your thoughts quit making sense and don't resemble reality anymore (like a weightlifter who lifts too much and now has no neck needs to put the weights down and step away from the gym), trust God, do the best you can with what you have, and follow your heart and gut...I think that's all any of us can really do.