PHILOSOPHY
SERVED ON THE
THE ROCKS
A collection of humourous essays and sundowner ruminations on life, people, society, and everything in between.
The Art of Overthinking
A Little Pour of Philosophy
The human mind is a wonderful instrument. It can compose symphonies, split the atom, and imagine worlds beyond the stars. Mine, however, prefers to spend its sleepless nights replaying embarrassing incidents from decades ago and preparing for disasters that will almost certainly never happen.
Here I lay, sprawled on my bed at 3:17 AM, woken up by the snores emanating from my own schnozzle that sounded eerily like the sharpening of a machete by a serial killer.
Generally, I sleep like a log, but on nights like this, when I wake up to the sounds coming out not just from my snout, but from every other creak and crevice, my brain goes spinning like a hamster on a wheel with steroids in its system.
My imagination, working in overdrive, acts as cardio for my brain. I need no equipment or expensive gym membership. I simply lie there, awake in the middle of the night, with my mind sprinting like Usain Bolt after three Red Bulls.
As I lay there, all the tenses start to feature in the overthinking flick screening inside my cerebrum in 5-D. The reel plays without a title sequence or opening credits, immediately hooking me into a psychological thriller I never signed up for.
Naturally, the past is the first to arrive on the scene, highlighting some of the most mortifying moments of my life and examining them with the precision of a forensic scientist at a crime scene. I wonder if my mates from class 9 still remember the thunderous fart that I inadvertently let out in front of the entire class, and whether they will bring it up in the next reunion.
Then there was this moment ten years ago when I jumped into the swimming pool wearing sheer white boxers and strutted out in full public view, not realizing that they had become transparent, à la Mandaakini in the Bollywood flick Ram Teri Ganga Maili.
All the bad decisions I made about my life come back to haunt me. Like the time I got an entrepreneurial bug and decided to quit my well-settled job, due for promotion, at the turn of the century.
In my half-asleep state, this moronic decision is replayed in ultra-HD with the bold caption “WTF were you thinking?”
Sure enough, that was one bad decision that comes back to haunt me like an unpaid loan recovery agent, as I’m inching towards declaring delinquency.
The present is not spared either. However, unlike in the past, rumination in the present tense is a bit docile. It mainly dwells on philosophical queries. Unfortunately, however long you chew the cud, the questions remain unresolved.It generally starts with evolutionary topics:
“Why was I born?”
“Was I oops baby?”
“What is the grand purpose of the existence of despicable me?”
Then it turns inwards, starting with the dysmorphia:
“Why do I have Cleopatra’s nose?”
And moving on to a more serious question:
“Why is there a single pipe for both swallowing food and breathing, which occasionally causes me to choke?”
Finally, the hypochondria sets in: A frantic picking of the snout to check if there is an ill-concealed tumour in my nose, which has turned malignant overnight.
Finally, the hypochondria sets in: A frantic picking of the snout to check if there is an ill-concealed tumour in my nose, which has turned malignant overnight.
What begins as a midnight archaeological dig through my nostrils soon culminates in a medical report from the best ENT in the country, confirming that things were indeed bad.
What begins as a midnight archaeological dig through my nostrils soon culminates in a medical report from the best ENT in the country, confirming that things were indeed bad.
“Am I dying?” is the next obvious, and probably the last question that is left unanswered, both by me and the imaginary ENT.
The future is next in line. This is where the overthinking brain truly spreads its wings and becomes a full-production-budget blockbuster.
The past merely embarrasses, while the present takes a philosophical twist. Nothing prepares you for the absurdity of the future. The plot shifts like billy-o from “WTF” to “Why” to “What if.”
And all of it is happening in quick succession.
Suddenly, the likelihood of impending doomsday, or Artificial Intelligence taking over civilization, feels alarmingly plausible.
Lying in bed, I start prophesying all sorts of disasters, with the confidence of a conspiracy theorist talking about the Illuminati on his third podcast appearance.
“What if a meteorite falls on the roof of my car while I am waiting for the signal to turn green in the infamous Bangalore traffic?”
Ridiculous, of course! Except…
Continue the journey with Sundowner At Six: Philosophy Served on the Rocks.