I've been thinking lately that maybe I think too much. Sometimes I think I'd rather just be. But there's a fear that immediately rises in me at this thought: What about my problems?
Who will think about my problems if I don't?
The thing is, thinking about my problems almost always seems to make them bigger, not smaller.
Thinking is by its nature creative. It can lead to creative solutions to our problems. But it can also — and in my experience, more easily — lead creative ways to grow and multiply our problems.
I sit at my journal "to think." I immediately begin writing about my problems. I assume this is good because journaling is healthy. I'm processing, right? I look at my problems. Describe them. Highlight them. My problems seem to grow.
But when I look up from my writing (about my problems), I see the sky. It is huge. I feel my breathing change — deepening and regulating. I feel my eyes and my body soften and open. Meanwhile, my problems remain down on the paper. They seem smaller than they did a moment ago.
Again I look down, and again the problems start to grow. If I stay here, they keep growing.
Look up.
Let the light in. Everything shifts. I can feel it in my breathing and in my body. There is so much out here, outside of my problems, outside of my thoughts about my problems.
It is still scary, out here, but in a different way than the way my problems are scary: It's just so big. So beyond my control. In comparison, the scariness of my problems feels like a nightmare. It feels like terror. It's not a natural fear.
It's just that: Unnatural. A nightmare. A dream.
In almost every case, my problems do not exist. They may exist in the future. But ninety-nine percent of our experience of "our problems" is of our thoughts about our problems, not the problems themselves.
Look up.
Your problems do not exist out here. If that one percent happen to materialize, they will look completely different in the light.
Dreams are fuzzy. They happen in the dark. It's impossible to see clearly in darkness.
Look up.
There is so much here. An entire universe is doing just fine. Full of life. Movement. Beauty. Light. So are you.
Your problems are just on the page.