"This too shall pass"

Drink water, and don't overthink

With each passing year Mom’s life advice, which I used to think basic, gains more credence: drink hot liquids, exercise, read the classics, keep your feet warm, and don’t overthink things. Clichés get a bad rep precisely for being what they are, but I’m finding that most truths tend to boil down to cliché, and contemplation rarely leads to originality—in fact, they might even be inversely correlated, as the deeper you go the more things seem to reduce to those simple sentences so overused they’ve lost all meaning. The answer isn’t the same as finding out for yourself—it’s about the journey, not the destination—but it’s possible what’s truthful is that way because of its lack of originality. You have Problem, you struggle, you feel bad for a while and then one day Problem clears and you’ve arrived the same way everyone before you did, which was to keep moving. This too shall pass.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time last year ruminating about things I was dissatisfied with but wasn’t taking action to influence: career, relationships or lack thereof, lifestyle and habits and values I’d fallen into by inertia of living in a crowded place, surrounded by people who cared about certain things when I did not know clearly what I cared for. I ruminated for months on end, replaying past events even after there was nothing left to process, yearning for connection while boycotting the dating scene, and craving change without making explicit change commitments. In doing so it became this self-fulfilling prophecy—in my head I couldn’t find the way out, and in life I was churning in place.

Two melodramatic moves later (first to Philly, then back 🤡), I’ve learned Mom was right about a few things, especially overthinking. It is a molecular self-sabotage—not sending the text that’s already been redrafted twice, or taking so long to compose the perfect response that the moment for warmth has passed. It is psychoanalyzing every interaction, reading into every tonal inflection, worrying that each passing moment of silence measures a growing fissure. Fear gets in the way of authenticity, and all the “what ifs” scramble a simple set of options at hand. The weight of an unknown can be crippling atop the simple immediate demands of one set of stairs.

Philly afforded the solitude I sought at the time but funny enough it became more an exercise of learning to cope with my own mind, to converse with its distortions and limit its hyperextensions, rather than follow the thought naively through to the end. I relearned some things that Mom told me long ago. If I drink water I will generally feel better. And the classics are in fact good reading.

Camus said something along the lines of we learn to live before we learn how to think (obviously there is a lot more nuance to his argument that I can’t regurgitate because I’m no Camus), and I guess where I’m going is that learning to live with how we think is super underrated. Do you live inside your head or out in the world? Probably both but how do you split your time, and by choice or not? Do you naturally sink or float? How much water should you really consume in a day?

I found out in Philly that if I idle on the couch too long I start to feel ill, the mind retreating further and further into itself, but physical movement, aka ex-er-cise, can catch that fall to some extent. When my ex had depression years ago Mom said he needed to work out more and I scoffed, but now I think she might have been right? The treadmill can’t fix you but it sure as hell can make your brain easier to carry around in that big useless head when it starts to drag you down. The mind can only spiral so much when the feet are turning over faster.

Borrowing Sonic’s pat-pat-pat-pat energy

The things I ruminated about last year are gradually untangling, though they kind of did so on their own once I started moving again rather than as a result of any mental breakthroughs I made. In hindsight I was trying to make decisions in the absence of new information by doing complex mental math when I might have come to better conclusions had I been out in the world gathering data. You don’t learn how to date except by doing it, iteratively stumbling upon your different failure modes, the triggers and short-circuits, what works and doesn’t. And similarly you don’t think your way into landing the right job—you try things out and get feedback from each new role. You can lament your life or you can build some new patterns to change it, but you can’t sit on the fence forever.

It turns out too much thinking undermines agency. They say once you choose, the path becomes clear, though before you get to clarity there is a zone of thought that shines a direct spotlight on the kinds of choices you’re avoiding and likely some actions you’ve negated. It is far too egotistical of your big little brain to believe you can think the problem away so maybe you should go out and do something about it instead, and even if you’re wrong you’ll know more quickly than to wait for the circular thought loops to play out.

This is as self-help as anything I’ll ever write. I know, I know, ironically: it is easier to learn the theory than to do the actual thing—more straightforward to understand textbook principles than make them habit; less burdensome to therapize others than show up unproblematically in your own relationships; easier—so much easier—to throw on flip-flops than find those socks Mom got you from Costco.

I am still guilty of overthinking but trying (taking action!) to break the pattern. I still withdraw into my own head time to time but I work out a little more and I’ve gotten better at drinking water.

So if I ever start whining about the “dread” and “nothingness” again, just tell me to STFU and go outside.