I think therefore...

I think therefore I am, and that’s the rub.

I seem to spend most of my time thinking and not enough of my time enjoying. Was it always so? Was there never a time when I simply enjoyed myself without asking myself why I was enjoying myself? Laughed without having to work out what it was that had made giggle? Sat down to eat a meal without needing to work out the ingredients that went into it and in my mind suggesting ways for it to be improved.

The more I think about things the more I’m unable to enjoy them, thinking forward to possible outcomes that will ‘inevitably’ come along to spoil my enjoyment – spicy food to indigestion, sunshine to thunderstorm, full bloom to autumn spoil.

Oh how I wish I could stop, but somehow the thinking habit has grown and grown until it takes the shine off of everything.

Cats don’t seem to live their lives worrying about why they enjoy sleeping in the sun or chasing bees. The last thing on their minds as the happily exist is whether to use factor eight or twenty or will the bee sting them if they catch it. There must have been a time like that for me, mustn’t there? Some time when I was so young that I didn’t know that I could get my fingers burnt and that the government would tax any happiness I managed to find, and that one day – not that far away – there would be no more fun to be had.

It’s all very well being cognitive, but if the price is true joy then I think I’d rather be a cat. Maybe it is better not to know what might be coming if you run across the road without looking.

There I go again, thinking too much instead of just enjoying writing my blog.