What Happens When You Think Too Much About Life

“To be too conscious is an illness.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

I used to think consciousness was humanity’s greatest gift.

The ability to understand the world, to analyze ourselves, to search for meaning.

But the older I get, the more I wonder if it is also our greatest burden.

Last night at 2 a.m., the world felt unusually quiet.

The kind of silence that makes your thoughts louder than they should be. So, I listened.

We humans regard ourselves as superior to other animals because of the strange and wonderful possession we received: consciousness.

Being aware of how the universe works but never truly knowing its secrets, analysing ourselves and others, but never seeing the complete truth, we constantly lie to ourselves, trying so desperately to prove that we are, in fact, conscious.

But is this truly a blessing worth keeping?

Understanding the World Brings Despair

The deeper you understand the world, the harder it becomes to exist peacefully within it.

When you're young, the world feels simple. Happiness is everywhere. You laugh easily. You trust people without questioning their motives. You believe effort always leads to reward, kindness is always returned, and life is moving toward some kind of meaningful destination.

Then awareness begins creeping in.

You start noticing contradictions.

People preach honesty but reward deception. Good people suffer while the selfish seem to thrive. Society runs on invisible rules no one openly admits exist.

This paradoxical way of being in the world is not only confusing, but also paralysing. The more you see, the harder it becomes to ignore.

Self-awareness starts like a gift.

It feels like waking up from a dream, a moment many of us can pinpoint in time, a day so different from all the others that you can never reverse it.

They called it maturity, I called it loss.

You start analyzing your behavior, your thoughts, your habits. You see your flaws with uncomfortable clarity. You notice patterns in others too, insecurities hidden behind confidence, kindness mixed with self-interest, ambition driven by fear.

Sooner or later, the gift begins to feel like a burden.

Overanalysing Everything Chains You

If you fall prey to the desire to understand and explain everything in the world, you will lose your ability to take action, to move, to feel, and, in the end, to live.

Explaining things until they become objects for dissection, calculating every possibility and consequence, turns life into a moral prison—one only you can see and cannot escape.

Unable to move forward or backward, you will remain still, time flowing by and over you, but not sparing your destiny, turning you to ashes before you even got the chance to live.

The Power of Illusion

One of the most interesting aspects about this matter is the fact that we do have the power of giving up a small part of this self-awareness that imprisons us by simply overlooking it.

If we decide to trick our mind into only analysing and perceiving the things that aid us and that are in our favor we can escape or at least diminish the impending doom.

The world in its nature is made from both good and evil and we can train ourselves into inclining towards one of the opposing poles. That way, we could value the moments that bring us joy and treat the matters that bring us sadness with lack of interest.

This doesn’t mean reality itself will change, but our perception of it can.

The whole universe we create in our mind is illusory so we have a sense of control over it, even if it is limited and not powerful enough to influence the world that exists beyond and outside us.

Therefore, being too self-aware ironically leads you to losing your identity and your place in the world. Even so, consciousness is what defines human nature and the loss of it would mean the loss of your destiny.

We all have to enjoy the benefits this apparent knowledge brings and bear the pain it casts over us. After all, we all live the same life. Better make it count.

Perhaps, at the end of all things, we will be able to believe that we were not at all doomed, but blessed with the power to build our own personal piece of the universe.

What is your universe like?

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Thanks for reading.

— Sophie D.

Question for readers:

Do you think self-awareness is a blessing or a curse?

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