It started out innocently enough.
I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up.
Inevitably, though, one
thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone - "to
relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more
and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
I began to think on the job. I
knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at
lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office
dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it, exactly, we are doing
here?"
Things weren't going so great at
home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the
meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I soon had a reputation as a
heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like
you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem.
If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."
This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my
conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been
thinking..."
"I know you've been
thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But, Honey, surely it's not
that serious."
"It is serious," she
said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and
college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't
have any money!"
"That's a faulty
syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry.
I'd had enough. "I'm going
to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the
library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with a PBS station on the radio. I
roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors... they didn't open.
The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a
Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing
at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye.
"Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably
recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am
today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we
watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we
share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
I still have my job, and things
are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I
stopped thinking.
