My new year began not with a bang nor a whimper, but with wheezing. Think Darth Vader’s mother.
Then came relentless coughing along with red-nosed pleas for sympathy and Kleenex from my family who summoned me to bed as they fumigated the house. The crud, heretofore referred to as The Christmas Plague of 2016, greeted me on Christmas night with a sore throat that felt like I swallowed a chainsaw.
One week and two emergency clinic visits later, I’m slowly recovering from strep and a respiratory infection, a “twofer” in crud terms. But, I realized I suffer from another ailment that may be more difficult to cure – chronic hyper-cogitation, a term I just made up. In other words, I think too much.
Spending most of the past seven days in bed, I had ample time to think, which is precisely the problem. I should have been sleeping.
Instead, my brain went into overdrive, mulling over everything from counting hours until the antibiotics kick in – is it 24 or 48? – to the future of our country to the real reason Brad and Angelina broke up. I have my theory, but will save that for another time.
Good thing I had plenty of index cards on my bedside table to capture these mental jewels. Now if only I could decipher what I wrote. In my medicine-induced haze, my notes look like they were written by a mad scientist or a sleep-deprived kindergartener. Either way, it appears I have a lot of phone calls to make, though I’m unsure what to say when I reach Oprah.
Or did my notes say Obama?
Yet the truth is I can’t blame the Christmas plague for my excessive thinking. I’ve been overthinking for a long time. Not just when I’m sick, but any free moment. In the car at a stoplight. At the grocery store checkout line. Even while reading, my mind wonders to something I need to do – a work project or an appointment – that nudges out enjoying a really delicious well-written paragraph on mindfulness.
Speaking of, the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh advises to “Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body.”
I tried this once. Sitting in a quiet, sunny spot on the carpeted floor in my bedroom, I began mindful breathing, releasing the noise from my cluttered head. As I inhaled positive thoughts with adjectives like “calm” and “peace,” I thought of Hanh’s admonition to bring my mind home to my body.
Then I thought of my body, specifically, my hips. And the South Beach diet I stopped and started and stopped. And chips. The warm and salty fresh-baked kind from the nearby Mexican restaurant that is responsible, in large part, for my expanding hips. Suddenly, I was hungry.
I’m not a lost cause, really. I just need to break a bad habit.
No time like the new year to start. The old me would whip out a pen and pad and draft a list of new year’s resolutions. Top of the list would be to turn off the internal chatter. But the very thought of making a list just adds to the problem.
So, this year will be one of less in a lot of ways. Less lists. Less thinking. More freedom. Maybe more sleep, too. I’m not sure I could have done anything to prevent getting sick over the holidays, but I believe chronic hyper-cogitation does not help build a strong immune system. It wears down the body, emotionally and physically.
I bet there’s a study on mind-body health on this subject, but, this year, I’m not going to think about it.