MOULTRIE, Ga. —  When you spend 20 days in isolation in a hospital, you have a lot of time to think about stuff.  A lot of things that used to bother me … well I don’t sweat those anymore.  

I go back to my college philosophy class and that age-old question, “Who am I and what am I doing here?

 I began my isolation by asking myself, somewhat rhetorically, “How in the world did I get here in this mess?”

Well I was just bopping along one day thinking I was doing great, and suddenly I was confronted with a deadly disease that only eight people out of 1 million get. So seven other people must have asked the same question, two of whom I met during my Mayo Clinic journey.

After my treatment, my hematologist told me to get on with my life and not dwell on amyloidosis. Easily said.

Since then, several emails from “parts unknown” touched on our thought processes and how one can waste precious time “overthinking things.”

One such email was titled, “How to Stop Overthinking Everything and Find Peace of Mind.”

So my friend, The Earl of Stumpworth by The Ochlocknee, and I were discussing “overthinking.” He said his wife, The Earlene, has often accused him of overthinking things.

I asked him to explain.

He said he was about to buy a gumball. There were several machines from which to choose. Two of them were identical. The gumballs were different colors but the same size. One cost a dime and the other a quarter.

So immediately he wondered why. Did the one that cost a quarter have more flavor? Had inflation not caught up with the one that only charged a dime? And when it is refilled, would it go up to a quarter?  

What if it was a marketing scheme designed to make him buy one of each and make a comparison?

Two more gum machines in the same row offered a handful of little square pieces for a quarter. Would the volume in that handful be as much as one of the gumballs? And would the amounts from those two machines vary?

So The Earl wound up buying a 25 cents gumball and a dime gumball. They tasted the same. He also tried a sampling from the two machines that gave little square pieces. One did give more pieces than the other, but he wasn’t sure if either would equate to one of the gumballs.

So next time, he will know that the dime gumball will be the best choice if he wants a round one. And if he wants little squares, then he knows which machine will give him the most pieces.  So his overthinking stopped just short of writing a thesis.

He said what’s scary is that he gave less thought to his choice in the last presidential election.

So The Earl has set about to “detox his mind.”  He said he no longer picks up one package of bologna and computes the weight and price per pound against another brand of bologna.

“I just get the one I want and move on,” he said.

Now earlier I said you get to think about a lot of stuff when you’re in isolation and when you’ve been humbled to a point of dangling your feet over the edge of life. So I went to buy a fishing reel the other day, and I quickly narrowed my choices down to two. The salesman pointed out the qualities of each, and I immediately said, “I’ll just take both of them.”

He said, “Really?”

I said, “Yes. On our best day, life is short. Let’s get on with it.”

(Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)