Can one spend too much time thinking about thinking? As in, getting lost in second level thoughts based on their first level thoughts?
I'm thinking of getting a burger. What are burgers made up of again? Well, there's the patty, obviously. The bun. Lettuce. Maybe some onions. Tomatoes. Cheese if you're not being weird about it. Pickles. Ketchup. Mustard. Wait. Tomatoes!? I thought that's equivalent to a salad? Salad is a broad term. What does that even mean? Is a burger just a warm salad between bread? etc.
Flip a coin and at least eight times out of ten, the trivial reality is most of these spirals lead absolutely nowhere productive. I will still end up getting the burger. Or not.
Unlike my mother, my grandmother noticeably and whenever I pay her a visit never spent more than fifteen minutes deciding what to make for dinner.
She opened the fridge, saw what was there, and made something.
That is, she just cooked, without recipe scrolling or reviews checking.
And the thing is, her meals were borderline great. Partly because she has done it enough times that her hands knew what to do without her brain getting in the way.
The other part probably has to do with her simple creative flair.
On a modern lens, I think one of the root malfunctions of our digital age is perceiving ourselves so conscious of our own consciousness that we can't just exist in the flow of ordinary tasks anymore.
Hyper-self-aware is a term that ever since my ears heard it stuck like a burr in my mind and became a recurring theme always noticeable within the hesitation before someone answers a simple question.
### Recursion problem
The trouble with thinking about thinking is that it's infinite regress waiting to happen.
For me, the trigger point is usually random, I'd notice my mind overthinking something mundane, say, why is glass material so fragile, then wondering if fragility is the necessary cost of transparency, and if that applies to human emotional vulnerability, and suddenly I'm three layers deep to some random territory up there in my head that has no bearing whatsoever on your present reality.
The act of observation disrupts the thing you're trying to observe, as an example is trying to watch yourself fall asleep. Trying never works.
An argument could be made that this type of observation is a pathway for one to possibly have a slightly more "examined life" to keep with the old Socratic ideal.
As in, one is making intentional choices rather than just stumbling through life like everyone else?
Maybe. Or maybe it's just another way to try escaping from the uncomfortable truth that most of existence is routine, unremarkable, and fundamentally ordinary.
The mundane doesn't need our help to be significant. It already is, in its own quiet way via consistency and scaffolding that holds up the "important" parts of life.
It sounds a bit paradoxical that something that's always there in the background when it becomes the foreground loses much of its grace.
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.
