Think much?

Few night ago I had a most stimulating conversation with a very dear friend. It gave me a lot of food for thought. I won’t go into the details of the conversation, but in brief, I asked him a question. Admittedly, it had no connection with our light hearted chatter. My question was, we might think that we are bringing joy to someone’s life but if we think about the flip side, what if we are in actual complicating the other person’s life by being a burden he is not habitual of carrying? (Okay, yes, I am a bit demented but in my defense, Saturdays spent at home do that to me!)

What he told me just might be the best advice I have ever received in my life. He accused me of thinking too much. Until now, I used to think (yes, think again!) that it is a sign of intelligence. I prided myself in being a thinker till I wrapped my head around this example.

You see the movie ‘3 Idiots’ for the first time. You love it! You see it for the second time, you like it still. You see it for the third time and you think, okay, Aamir Khan was over – acting a bit.

The point is by third time, you start thinking, which is something you aren’t meant to do. And when you start thinking about things, you are bound to find things that you won’t like.

My friend said: One should never think about the good things in one’s life. That doesn’t mean that you take them for granted either. Good things are meant to be felt. They should be appreciated and enjoyed. By pondering over them we just spoil them. So, with regards to the convoluted question I had put to him, if you are happy, and the other person in question seems happy as well, why even think of negative thoughts?

I observed my thoughts and realized that things I ponder a lot about are all negative. And then it hit me. Those thoughts are negative only because I ponder over them.

Our elders also agreed to the same. They are an intelligent lot. Their age old customs might seem old – fashioned and inconvenient to us, but the ideology behind them is very practical. Elders always insist that courtship period for any couple should be brief.  Most couples will swear by the fact that the time between their engagement and wedding was the golden period of their relationship. Well, that is because they just enjoyed each other’s company and felt happy. Getting to know each other becomes so fascinating, that there is no time to spare for thinking. Too much time guarantees thinking and a too – much – thinking human brain is the origin of every problem in the world. When our mind thinks too much, it is bound to think negatively.

You see both me and Dawood Ibrahim have the same coloured blood, one liver and two kidneys. It is just the brain which makes all the difference. It is the brain which makes a person good or evil.  A person with nothing better to do will think and think and think evil!

Most people are under the impression that ‘thinking’ and ‘perception’ mean the same thing. But my dear friend told me his theory that the word – ‘thinking’ has a negative connotation while perception is much more positive in nature. Perception is what you feel about a thing, situation or person. And thinking is well, thinking.   

So, thank you dear friend for giving me a whole new perception. From now on...