There’s a time and a place for thinking. And there’s a time and a place for being. All being and no thinking leads to rash decision making. And all thinking and no being leads to a sheltered, inexperienced life.
Times when we’re experiencing life are times when we should drop thinking altogether. Like when we’re: walking, running, swimming, playing, hiking, meditating, listening, dancing, drawing, painting, etc.
And times when we’re reflecting on life and planning ahead for the future are times when we should turn the thinking up. Like when we’re: reading, writing, conversing, planning, researching, developing, building, brainstorming, imagining, visualizing, etc.
It’s when we get either of the two confused that we stumble in life.
It’s when we start thinking about playing or meditating or dancing that it suddenly becomes awkward and unnatural. And it’s when we spend all of our time being and none of our time writing or planning or imagining that suddenly our mistakes repeat and our life trajectory worsens.
Like most things in life, it’s a balancing act. One that I don’t think we’ll ever get perfectly correct, but one that we can and should be more conscious of and aim more deliberately for.
P.s. This post was inspired by (and became the afterword for) The Story About The Centipede and The Frog.