"Exist As You Are " by Lorenzo R

 

“Hesitation is defeat” - Isshin Ashura

 

            As this is my fourth time restarting my writing, I’ve come to realize the true art of overthinking. At first I bounced around ideas of ambition or consciousness or existence, but I thought too hard about how to portray them in a way that wasn’t generic or lackluster. Now, as I’m sitting here, I find myself 30 minutes from 11:59 with almost nothing. Overthinking is not an activity or an action but I believe it is truly an art form. Merriam-Webster defines overthinking as, “putting too much time into thinking about or analyzing”, but I believe it is beyond this. Overthinking, as simple as it may seem, requires endless loops of creativity. It is like analyzing a chess game trying to find the best move, the detriment in this though is that your clock never stops ticking. Think too little and you’ll make the wrong move, but think too much, and you’ll have no time to make a move at all. This is why I believe overthinking is a fine art form. Like an abstract painting, overthinking throws conventions to the side to make room for splotches that can be interpreted, and reinterpreted and ultimately you are left realizing that it probably never meant anything in the first place.

The art of overthinking requires true sentience and complex thought, it requires human nature at its most nuanced form. It requires the true irrationality we all possess and a disregard for the obvious answer of “who cares”.  The concept of Occam’s Razor, otherwise known as the Law of Parsimony, best encapsulates this, asserting that the explanation or reasoning for something is often the simplest reasoning available. This is what makes overthinking such a uniquely human experience, and such a detrimental one at that. No lion has ever pondered over its next meal, it simply hunts, eats, and sleeps. The time wasted in overthinking is its most damaging factor, and overall time is the one thing we can’t afford to waste.

Another aspect of overthinking I find interesting is the social implications that I believe cause it. People often overthink about their relationships, or how they appear to others and fail to realize their own ego in doing so. The slightly sad truth is that most people don’t truly care as much as you think they do, and if they do, their opinions ultimately hold little weight. Wanting to be liked by others is natural but its important to differentiate when someone’s opinion matters and when it doesn’t. Overthinking takes all variables into consideration but fails to account for the fact that some of these variables don’t even matter in the first place. That is why I believe overthinking is such a profound artistic process because I believe it takes a truly creative person to imagine problems in places they don’t exist, and then find solutions to these nonexistent problems. At the end of the day, the art of overthinking is ultimately a hinderance, the lowest of art forms, and it is important to live in the moment; to exist as you are instead of as you will be. Living in the present allows you to be able to realize when you’re thinking too much and instead of thinking, doing. Instead of hesitating ultimately just go for it, whatever it may be.