Instead of Thinking, Create a New Heart

Non-thoughts by Jane Tawel

“The Earth Delights to Feel Your Bare Feet” by Chiot’s Run is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

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Instead of Thinking, Create a New Heart

By Jane Tawel

June 25, 2023

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I am an overthinker. Perhaps you can relate. Every moment of every day I find myself in a battle of wits, (or is it witlessness?). The battle is “to think or not to think, that is the question”.

I am also a seeker. And like many people, I have spent a life time, seeking answers to questions big and small. I have found many good and helpful teachers along a blessedly long life-line and I have used their teachings, I hope, to change and grow and better myself, because I believe at the heart of every true teacher, religion, spiritual-consciousness, philosophy, and science is the quest to be the best one can be in this life and perhaps even in some life-beyond. And so, some of us, like I, seek and we find. And then, we doubt. And the doubt for some, like I, takes the form of overthinking. Over thinking the past, which is no more; overthinking the future which is not yet; overthinking other people, both significant and rather insignificant to the reality of my reality right now; and beyond all overthinking, is the overthinking of self.

And I think, (although I may be overthinking this), that what I have realized today in a tiny little section of my overthoughtful brain, is that what I need to do, is go back to the very childlike idea that the happiest moments of thinking are when one is asking questions.

As adults, we sort of stop asking questions, maybe because we are still carrying the hurt of questions that have or had answers that hurt; questions that had answers that were rejections, or made us angry or fearful; questions that often lead to a feeling of powerlessness or depression or despair. And so, we begin to fear questions, of ourselves and questions of others, because we fear the answers or we fear we don’t know the answers, or we want to insist that everyone answer our questions in the same way we do (this last one is especially a problem of our supposed answers to questions in our religions and politics, both of which are temporal and always have been incredibly flawed in any one’s idea of logic.) And yet, being adult gets to be all about knowing…