Too much thinking is a gross misuse of the brain, says AJIT KUMAR BISHNOI
A budding model fell in love with a young businessman she had met at a party. She was extremely beautiful, which attracted the businessman, and his impressive personality bowled her over. They began to meet. After this went on for a few weeks, the model enquired about the man’s marital status. After some hesitation, he admitted that he was already married. This was not acceptable to the model; she broke all connections with him. However, the businessman was not so easily willing to part company with her. He begged her for one more meeting. She came and this man promised that he would divorce his wife if she continued to meet him, and they could get married as soon as the divorce proceedings were over.
This assured the model and they began meeting again. But in every meeting, she brought up the subject of divorce. Every time the man assured her that the matter was in the final stages; she should have a little more patience. As time dragged on she was in two minds. One option was to break the relationship and start her life afresh without the man. The other option was to give him a little more time as he was requesting. Double-minded, she kept thinking about what should she do. Totally obsessed by such thoughts, she became highly depressed. Then one day, unable to bear the pain and suffering of depression, she committed suicide.
What went wrong with herIJ I am not getting into the merits of her earlier decision to continue the relationship or the fatal decision to commit suicide. My objection is to the extent of time she took to decide. Probably, she knew in her heart that the man was bluffing, but she was unable to decide; she just kept thinking about it. This is where she went horribly wrong. Any person with normal intelligence should be able to think through a problem and find a solution in about five minutes. If no solution seems in sight, then there is no solution without help from others.
A really intelligent person then discusses the problem with a close friend or someone who can help like a counsellor. It is ridiculous to go on thinking indefinitely and strain the brain. The brain is a material machine, and no machine can be allowed to run indefinitely without it presenting problems. This is exactly what happened in the case of the model; her mind just failed and she could not think straight.
Don’t we know that our brains work on all the important problems faced by us in the subconscious mind even when we have forced ourselves not to think about them consciously or actively. This is same as going to a search engine. This works many times but the wise thing to do is to seek help in the meantime. We cannot allow the problems to remain in our minds forever without seriously causing damage to ourselves. Too much thinking either consciously or subconsciously is a gross misuse of the brain. Does an overstressed brain not give us headacheIJ Is depression not the result of too much thinking of the negative kindIJ
The conclusion is not to think indiscriminately, ie without time limit. As mentioned earlier, five minutes is about the maximum we should give ourselves to find a solution or say a day for the subconscious mind to provide us the answer. Beyond that we are in dangerous territory. We have to seek help prior to that.
Devotees of god turn to him for help. And he does provide help. Is god not a better search engine than Yahoo or GoogleIJ Rather, god is perfect because he is omniscient. Turning to god is ideal but if you are not inclined to go to him, then go to someone else, where such help can be available, but for god’s sake do not keep thinking about a problem indefinitely. I welcome your comments.
Bishnoi is a spiritual writerand can be reached at spiritual@ajitbishnoi.com