The human mind is not obedient – especially not mine. My mind is anything but calm. It's like a parliament in session, with every thought claiming a seat, all talking at once, and none listening. I am both the president and the opposition. There's a dictator in my head, one who wakes me at night with relentless “what ifs,” interrogates me, files away the past and blackens the future. Forgiveness is forbidden. Decisions are impossible. That’s why I flee by sleeping, or distract myself to avoid thinking.
I am a child of this age. I feel suffocated when my internet connection drops. Yet, ironically, the more connected I am, the lonelier I feel. Social media lets me watch other people’s lives while making it harder to live my own.
“Conscience does make cowards of us all.” When William Shakespeare wrote these words in "Hamlet," he wasn’t just describing indecision – he was capturing one of the mind’s oldest problems: overthinking. And yes, I am one of you. A card-carrying member of the Overthinkers’ Club.
Four centuries have passed, but the Danish prince still represents the modern psyche: trapped between thought and action, endlessly questioning, unable to move.
Overthinking – what psychology calls “rumination” – means turning over a situation or possibility in your mind again and again, endlessly analyzing past events, and obsessing over potential outcomes. As Epictetus said, “It’s not things that disturb people, but their judgments about things.” In our age, though, there is less judgment and more echo. A constant noise. In silence, the mind’s voice grows louder, so we hide in the noise of our headphones.
Pascal put it this way: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We live in an age where sitting alone is harder than ever. Our homes are crowded with digital products that keep us company.
For centuries, thinking was considered a virtue. Philosophers, artists and poets shaped the world with their thoughts. But as Albert Camus pointed out, “To think is to learn to see again.” Yet the whirlpool we’re caught in can blind us. Thought should be a tool, not a goal. Overthinking is often just another form of avoidance. Instead of facing uncertainty, the mind tries to impose control through thought.
The Japanese have a word, "tsundoku," for the habit of accumulating books you never read. It’s a metaphor for our mental hoarding. Perhaps the modern tsundoku is the dozens of unread articles left open in browser tabs, the endless to-watch video lists, the scraps of ideas piling up in our notes apps and the useful screenshots on our phones. We collect without consuming. We swallow without digesting. We read without thinking.
The human mind has always been described as our greatest gift, what sets us apart from other animals. But this power, mismanaged, becomes our subtlest weakness. Dostoevsky’s "Notes from Underground" narrator drowns in pride and resentment, while Kafka describes the mind as a labyrinth with no exit. Both point to the same truth: the mind, if left unfree, becomes its own prison.
In the modern world, technology, culture and personal expectations make that prison even more complex. Notifications, algorithms, the endless news cycle, they seem to break our chains of thought, but really they drive us to think even more. Constant connection was supposed to promise freedom, but it has become a new captivity.
And yet, with the guidance of literature, philosophy and science, we can learn to free our minds from this maze. Perhaps as Lao Tzu said, we should “Stop thinking, but don’t stop feeling.” The antidote to overthinking lies in listening not to our thoughts but to our feelings.
Feelings are immediate. Real. Thoughts spin scenarios. Feeling takes courage; it can hurt us. Thinking is often an escape; we build armor in our minds so we don’t have to feel. That’s why overthinking is really a way to silence the heart.
Maybe we should go back to the beginning: to calmness. As Daily Sabah’s Managing Editor Batuhan Takış always reminds me: “We need to keep our calm.” But this calm is not passive surrender; it is an active choice. Finding silence within the noise. Creating an inner order despite mental chaos. Listening to ourselves without judging ourselves. Thinking without becoming prisoners of thought.
In the end, the human mind is a fascinating tool. Both labyrinth and key, both jailer and prisoner. Our thoughts can save us – or imprison us. Perhaps life’s true tragedy lies here: Our greatest escape is retreating into our minds, and our greatest liberation is learning to emerge from them.
That’s why, instead of being paralyzed like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we should choose to roll our stone over and over with Camus’s Sisyphus, consciously, defiantly. Even if there is no meaning, there is the courage to create meaning. And sometimes, that meaning emerges not when we choose thought, but when we choose silence.
Perhaps the most revolutionary freedom is simply to say: “I am not thinking, I am living.”
