We overthink.

As much as this statement probably doesn’t apply to everyone, but I believe it does to most of us. Be it conscious or unconsciously, we push our minds to think of things we are not yet able to figure out. We put pressures upon ourselves to decipher something we can’t even define, yet.

So, I was sitting down with a scrap paper that’s half full of scribbles wondering what to write about. And this grand, ever overwhelming word: FUTURE. I was almost laughing to myself because I never really pondered on the weight that this word holds. We say it, fret about it, cry about it, get depressed about it and even perhaps commit suicide because of it, all the time. Its usage bears no resemblance to how powerful this word can be when it comes to living a meaningful life while discovering the meaning of life altogether.

I came to this reflection that we worry too much about the future, don’t we? We think about it too much. I think some days we don’t have any spaces left in our heads to think about anything else but the future. And I’m not even talking about those grand future(s), of who we will become in 10 or 20 years from now. I’m talking about the simplest thoughts about the future, which can be about tomorrow or the next hour, maybe even the next minute.

The thing with future is that it’s called the future because it is yet to come. It is not here yet. It is about something after the present. There’s a reason why it is called the future because we’re not quite there yet. The problem with this concept is that there is no way we can know for sure about the future if we’re not there yet. It is humanly impossible for us to be sure about anything when it comes to the future because the very essence of future is uncertainty and unknown. If we know what’s going on, it’s not the future. It is “for the time being” and the “present”.

See, we are hurting ourselves when we do this. We are placing our minds to figure out things that are not within the reach of our dimensions. The future was never made to be figured out in the present, therefore it is called the future. The present is meant to be figured out now, that’s why we call it the present. How in the world did we even begin to think that we can comprehend and define something that is outside of our time and space?

It’s like a loophole without an exit route. We think about it, we can’t figure it out, we stressed out, we think about it some more, we still can’t figure it out, we get stressed out even more, and so forth, with its degree of intensity going up at every loop. But we’re not supposed to figure it out, right? So why are we even putting efforts to figure it out in the first place?

This is one of the things that I don’t understand about human logic. It completely, fully understands what it serves, which is to make sense of things. To serve as a foundation for us humans to operate as sensible and reasonable beings. I believe our logic tells us that the future is not possible to be defined. Predicted, maybe. But not defined and figured out. Predictions are merely guesses about the future that are sometimes true and sometimes false. Still holding uncertainty though, because if it is certain then it is a fact, not a prediction. What we call as fact isn’t based on the future, but of the past and present. So, we can’t figure out the future with facts because we need to figure out things according to its dimension of time and space, right? Context, that’s the fancy word for it. And facts are a thing of the past and present, not of future.

So, while we know that it is logical to conclude that it is illogical to figure out the future, we still try to figure it out. I guess this makes us illogical, smart people. (Or mere humans facing a hard time to accept that some things are just beyond our control. For example: the future.)

Matthew 6:34 (MSG)
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes".

So, why do we still try to figure it out?