Are You a Problem Thinker?

Given my post yesterday and my efforts to be virtuous, here's a bit of wit for all you thinkers.  I don’t know who the author is but I customized it for the STR crowd: 

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another and soon I was more than just a social thinker.

I began to think alone – "to relax," I told myself – but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me and finally, I was thinking all the time.

I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Plantinga and Moreland. I would return to the office dizzied and confused asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.

I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.

I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"

"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some Aquinas, with STR on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors…they didn't open. The library was closed.

To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.

As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for the Summa, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.

Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Napoleon Dynamite." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.

I still have my job and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.

Comments

[wung]

ha, nice ...

[Stephen Bolin]

My life would be easer if I did not think as much...

But I love my life.

[Kevin Schroeder]

I keep thinking that all the intellectual elites will eventually think themselves into idiocy. Or maybe they've already done that. I don't know. I try not to think about it.

[Robert Casteline]

Luckily, my raging addiction to orchid pollen prevents me from understanding this.

Excellent post. I will be sharing this with reckless abandon.

[Barry]

This is great. Humorously virtuous! On a more serious note, it reminded me of something Frederick Douglass, a great American, said. "I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing…In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a besast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me." Thinking does take us out of our comfort zone. Think on!

[TK]

That was halarious. I am going to have to show my wife.

[Derrick]

I remember hearing a short comedy piece like that substituting Bible reading as the "problem". It made a drug reference to "you should see my tracts". It was funny, particularly being a redeemed drug addict myself (10+ years clean). Good stuff Brett