Turtles all up in the Sky

I'm going to paraphrase a story from a novel I love. Excellent book, anyone who overthinks and is likely to be trapped within the echoes of their own thoughts should definitely give this a read. The story goes like this. The protagonist's best friend recounts a story she heard from her mother. In this, a scientist was giving a lecture on how the earth was created. He mentions that the earth was formed billions of years ago from a cloud of cosmic dust, and for a while, it was boiling. But, slowly it started cooling down enough for oceans to form. And the single-celled organisms emerged in the oceans, gradually life got more abundant and complex, humans evolved and here we were.

At the end of the lecture, he asks the audience to ask if they had any questions. At the end of the hall, a really old lady raises her hand and then says, "that is all good Mr. Scientist, but the truth is, that earth is a flat plane riding on the back of a turtle." The scientist decided to humor her and asked, "if that is so, what is the turtle standing on top of?" And she replies that is standing on the shell of another turtle. This frustrates the scientist who asks her what that turtle was standing on. She exclaims, "Sir, you don't understand. It is turtles all the way down."

It may have been a very confusing story,  and may not make any sense but what left a mark is that the lady was so sure about the fact that the earth was held up by turtles all the way down, she never even wanted to muddle it up by inserting logic there. she heard a lecture, the proof was right there. She never needed that.

Our mind is a maze. It has memories, thoughts, decisions, reasonings, and the pressure that we keep ourselves under every day. This makes your mind a living minefield where things shoot all the time. Personally, my mind acts like a maze of my own creation. I forget things I was supposed to remember. I overanalyze simple actions. The other day, the food I was eating became fuel for my cells and as an extension, the essence of the entire ecosystem growing inside my body. My thoughts churn from one place to another, just like the basketball does during a game. Or even the tennis ball. On several occasions, a string of thoughts gets embedded into me and refuses to let me be free. These occasions prompt me to think if I make my thoughts up or if these thoughts make me up.

If such a day would come that each human would have to be responsible for something, would they take the responsibility of making their thoughts, or would they never have the choice to think for themselves? Each cell in our body performs a complex series of functions. these functions usually happen without our voluntary agreement, we don't make these calls. How then, are human beings supposed to be the most advanced beings on the planet, when the choice of running our own bodies is taken away from us.

To summarize, I go through these intense sessions of overthinking where my mere existence is put to the test. the outcome of this, if any, starts to shape up the moment I start calming my mind to try and think in the direction that provides clarity. That moment of clear thinking starts a new day. But clarity can only help so much. What I noticed helped was my conviction. This did not come easily to me and was recently told to me by a dear friend. So now, I have a totem to help me reach the finish line sooner rather than later. A shot of self-made concoction that acts as a mantra and helps clear the fog inside.

Tell me, what helps you decide????