extrapolated from John Nunley at FunnyBone
My thinking started out innocently enough.
I began to think at parties now and then, just to loosen up. At first, I told myself it wouldn't hurt anyone -- that no one would have to know. That it could just be my dirty little secret.
Inevitably though, one thought led to another. Soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone ("to relax," I claimed), and fooled myself into thinking that I could quit whenever I wanted to. But deep in my heart I knew that it wasn't true. As time passed, thinking became more and more important to me.
Finally I was thinking all the time.
I actually began to think on the job. Thinking and employment don't mix, I know that, but it was something I couldn't stop.
Soon I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so that I could go out and read Thoreau and Kafka. I would later return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?" I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. People began to avoid me, sometimes shutting their doors when I stumbled down the hall. After asking too many questions at one particularly long department meeting, I suddenly stopped being invited.
Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. Things got complicated, and she spent the night at her mother's.
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." Of course, 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 snapped, "and I want a divorce!"
"But honey, surely it's not that serious!"
"It IS serious," she said, her 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, stomping out the door. Who did she think I was? Machiavelli?
With the NPR station droning on the radio, I headed straight for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche -- with maybe a little Hegel to cut the taste. But when I roared into the parking lot and ran to the big glass doors, they didn't open. The building 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?"
You might 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") and tearfully confess if we picked up a book that wasn't on the New York Bestseller's list. But mostly we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
It's changed my life. I still have my job, and my friends don't avoid me anymore. Even my marriage is improving. Life just seems so much easier, somehow...
...now that I've stopped thinking.
