TOW: Sometimes We All Think Too Much

You ever have that feeling that you've thought about something so much, you've walked around some problem in your life so often, that all of a sudden the track you were running now seems like a giant rut?  You, my friend, are a victim of your own thinking.  You've thought about something frontways, sideways, backwards, forwards, and now it's time to let it go. 


Only you can't.  Your wheels are spinning.  You suddenly worry, did all that thinking do me any good?  Or have I made a bad habit out of lamenting something in my past?


I have been reading Nietzche commentary lately and an idea of Nietzche's is the concept of tragedy and pleasure.  Nietzsche says that we have a contradictory attitude towards pleasure--we often want pleasure to be repeated, or to experience a moment of pleasure just a little bit longer. 

And sometimes we get stuck.  Because we can think about things we used to love--or love to hate--in the past.  Our past becomes part of our present, our future, and shapes our thinking.  What Nietzsche is saying (minus a bunch of philosophical concepts that don't apply here) is that our ability to think about pleasure is often what causes us pain.  We want to will pleasure into the future.  Who hasn't wished for one more day in their own personal version of paradise?  Who doesn't wish for the idea of a blessed eternal life? 

It's here that Nietzche says, "Have you ever said Yes to a single joy?  O my friends, than you have said Yes too to all woe.  All things are entangled, ensnared, enamoured-; if you ever wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, 'You please me, happiness!  Abide, moment!' then you wanted all back...for all joy wills eternity."

I often think that we often wish for pleasures from the past to revisit us in the future. We say things like, "If only the amount of sex, money, fame, popularity, youth, energy, etc. visited me in the future like it has in the past, I could be truly, truly be happy."

And this is the trap, because happiness is an act of will 75% of the time.  The rest of the time, it's a set of circumstances.  Most of us don't get the circumstances that equate happiness.  Most of us don't get the sunset ending.

Happiness is a state of thinking.  Thinking provides us with the answer, but also the trap.  We can get stuck in the past, because the past is beautiful in our eyes.  But often much more painful than we remember.  And we transfer that pain into loss and nostalgia, something Nietzsche councilled against--because otherwise we have a kind of sad eternity, where we only experience the same things, the same patterns, again and again, which is to accept pleasure and all the pain that comes with it.  We fall into a trap where life is pain, mitigated by sessions of pleasure.  Not very pleasant.

Sometimes we kick an issue in our head until it's dead and bleeding.  Sometimes an issue kicks us until we feel like we are dead and bleeding.

And there might not be an answer to any of that, except that the past belongs there--in the past.  I'm sure, always sure that we can build a better future, no matter what the circumstances.

 But don't think too hard about it.  Eh heh.