Thoughts, Thinking of Thoughts, and “Overthinking-Inspired” Poetry

“I like to play with words” – My reply when people ask me if I’m a poet. 

I enjoy thinking about things. Concrete things. Ethereal things. Life-threatening things. Trivial things. If left alone, I could stare for hours and hours at a single falling leaf, an ant, a car stuck in a traffic jam, an airplane, and numerous boisterously glaring city lights.

(I have even willingly let a mosquito bite me because I found it fascinating to examine how this delicate winged insect went about sucking my blood.) 

I am aware I sound like a disturbed, autistic, antisocial, and clinically depressed introvert. Perhaps I am all of the above. Perhaps I am none of these ‘labels’. Titles obfuscate matters far too much anyway. The simple rendition is that I find great pleasure and amazement in observing things and imagining a story I can interlace around them. Solitude does not inconvenience me in the least bit when I have nothing to do. It only disturbs me when there are thoughts in my head that are troubling me since those thoughts, never, never leave my mind and will constantly manifest themselves the moment they have a chance to do so. Usually, until I find a new home for them, these plethoras of thoughts remain my unwelcome travel companions.

I should note that I never “decide” to overthink. It has become a way of life for me; one I have painfully tried to cope with. And in general, I have not been able to eradicate it from my life. As such, my tendency to overthink, for a long time, only succeeded in constantly burdening and overwhelming me. 

That said, and since I could not stop my thoughts, I decided to fully splurge and allow myself to explore these things I found myself thinking about. This experiment of mine yielded two rather strange findings as I discovered: I think in images; I think in stories. 

I would often be sitting with family, friends, or colleagues, and receive constant remarks along the lines of “where have you let your mind wander?” I would not even notice that I had absentmindedly drifted off again. Distracting as this was, I felt there must be some benefit I could get out of it. I decided to write some of my thoughts down. I carried my moleskin notebook and black pen with me everywhere I went. And so it began. 

When I saw cars, I thought of who the drivers were, where they were coming from, and where they were headed. When I saw airplanes, I thought of what a passenger was leaving behind, what he was looking forward to, and if he even considered the possibility that there was a 20-smth-year-old thinker looking up to the sky thinking about him, his life-choices, and wondering about the destination of his flight. When I saw all the beautiful city lights before I went to sleep, I thought of the people who lived in all of these houses. Why were their lights still on? Why weren’t they sleeping? Was something wrong? Were they happy?

The result of my experiment was unexpectedly rewarding: The more I jotted random thoughts and observations down, the more I found I was in possession of an untold fragmented story: A story I had to weave myself with emaciated pieces of unconnected yarn. And here was the silver lining: To find the relation between all of these random manifestations, images, and thoughts, all I had to do was think. 

I became a poet. Not out of volition, but coercion.

Somehow, there was the belief that if I got the thoughts down on paper, they would leave me alone. With my demons and bullies frolicking on a blank sheet, my brain was exorcised. Thought-free. And for a fleeting amount of time: Sane.

The writing process was one I enjoyed greatly. Once my notebook was filled with random words and musings, I would go back to it, scrutinize my unrelated scribbled expressions, and think patiently about how I could slowly transition in and out of them the same way my thoughts percolate in and out of my own mind. Each poem I wrote would be one I would revise into several drafts and still consider incomplete. I would even sometimes forget about my working-drafts for almost a week or two, and only revisit them again when I’d be sure I could approach them with a virgin mind. This is perhaps because minds too, can be raped. Anything is possible when thoughts viciously force themselves, and begin penetrating. 

I had days where I stared at a blank sheet for hours and produced no work. Similarly, I also had days where I woke up at 4am because I had a great idea I. Could. Not. Stop. Thinking about. This blog post is one of those things. And now that my document is bordering on four pages, I find myself thinking about how I should wrap things up and stop thinking already. 

Psychologically speaking, I could be diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive and/or Anxiety Disorder. Linguistically speaking, I could be referred to as a collector of thoughts, images, and contemplations. Either way, I have come to realize that irrespective of which definition applies to me:

If you stare at it long and hard enough, is there anything more fascinating than a single leaf, stone, fly, or even granule of sand?

N.B: I was nominated to give a TEDx talk on the 23rd of August, 2014. The idea I write about and discuss here is the one that I later on developed and presented as my TEDxLAU talk. In order to watch my full talk "Let's Overthink Overthinking" click here.