Thinking
As I’m reading my book, Six Impossible Things, by John Gribbin, a tidy little book dealing with subatomic particles and their mysterious duality as particles and waves, I am struck by something. Every physicist mentioned has performed a thought experiment, oftentimes because technology has not advanced to a stage that would let them perform a live experiment, but usually just to prove a point about the mysterious quantum world.
And I thought, how is that any different than me sitting around ruminating on a personal problem I’m having and working through the scenarios in my mind. On occasion, I’ve been accused of overthinking things, but it seems now that it might be a fairly logical process for someone who is interested in solving what appears to be an unsolvable problem and is willing to take the time to think it through.
So, going forward I’m going to quit worrying about my wandering mind and let it ruminate because when it comes to interpersonal issues I need solutions, and I need all the time I can get to find them, and I want to be more or less successful. I’ll simply recast my process as thought experiments and run the scenarios until I get a satisfactory answer. Putting some discipline around the process may be just what the doctor ordered, if I had a doctor to order anything.