I am majoring in psychology, and I don’t know a better way to say this but I think I am majoring in psychology because I probably need to see a psychologist. Stat. Each day I find a new reason as to why therapy might be beneficial for me. Today was no different, except a professor of mine gave me consensual validation for what I have been thinking for a while. She introduced in a lecture today, the term (or terms?) Cognitive Misers. She said that she came across this term in a Social Psychology textbook some fifteen years ago; she said human beings tend to be cognitive misers. The minute she said it my head went baaaa badaaabing daaa boom.

You wanna know why? It was an intellectual revelation like no other that I have had in a while. Two words put together, and they suddenly explained me to exactly why everyone, me included, thinks that I need to see a therapist. It is because of this simple reason. People just don’t think. Not because they can’t, but because of a variety of reasons which all tell them that thinking is inconvenient.

I’ll tell you why being anything other than a cognitive miser cannot be survived by most people. Unfortunately, probing, poking, analyzing and weaving a thread of thought and following it to the end reveals to you that there is no end. The fact that people consider not thinking too much ‘saner’ than thinking a lot is proof enough, nobody wants to risk it. Nobody wants to dwell too much on meaning, nobody wants to be the one who writes a Regency novel in reply to a text that reads ‘K, bro’. People shy away from depth, and because I don’t, I see that sometimes it is wise to not analyze everything. Sometimes a jerk is not a ‘product of a bad childhood, broken family’ but simply a jerk.

Thinking opens up doors, doors toward more thoughts, more knowledge, and more information. It is daunting to be a cognitive spendthrift because I don’t know where to draw the line. For, I defend people who bash my favorite Harry Potter character, that’s Severus Snape, by the way. And I want to see the brightest, most beautiful potential that dwells inside everyone but that leaves me weak before their ugliness. It’s a lot to digest, my life knows no objectivity where it should and knows only objectivity when ‘normal’ people show emotion. After a point, there is simply so much going on my head that I stop making sense. Except, each day I learn that I’m better of this way, I’m designed to think. With an overactive mind comes great responsibility. I will not push my problems and the problems that I might have seen in the eyes of someone I saw on the metro under the rug. You know why that is? That is because I cannot, not without killing my spirit. I am not saying everyone who refuses to take the trouble of thinking is committing spiritual suicide. No, wait, I almost am.

And humanity, if you prove me wrong, no one will be happier than I.