Stop Overthinking and Take Action
For the past few weeks, we watched several short videos about animals and how they stand up for their survival. These make me think about our actions when facing the exact same situation. Yes, we are much smarter than them, but the ability to think more about the consequences does not give us more courage to do the same thing. The brave dog tries to save its injured buddy from the highway, and there are numerous cars passing by quickly. In the end, the brave dog successfully completes the rescue mission. If it is a human being lying on the high way, I believe no one would hit the brake and risk their own life to drag that person to the safe zone. Why? We think too much about the consequences. How long will it take to rescue her? Will the car behind hit me during the rescue process? When will the ambulance and police arrive? Should I take some responsibility for providing the details to the police if the injured person lose consciousness? Probably most people will hit the gas pedal rather than brake after a short-time struggle. We have our own life to worry about and do not to take any more responsibilities, even it is about saving a person’s life. That is quite sad, isn’t it?
The second video about the battle among buffalo, lion, and crocodile is another victory of taking actions bravely. The baby buffalo will soon become a delicious meal to a couple of lions. But the buffalo herd does not give up. They gather together to form an impregnable wall with their horn facing to the lions. The deadlock is broken immediately when one brave buffalo strikes out and chases one lion away. The lions have to gave up their “meal” under the furious strike from individual buffalo in the herd. I’m amazed at the unity of the herd and their effort to save the baby buffalo. Those individual adult buffalo striking out fiercely and even chasing the lion make me salute to their heroic actions. When facing the injustice situations, these heroic buffalo just like “whistle blowers” to unleash the fury of general public in order to get the justice. What even amazed me is their gathering speed, and the buffalo herd starts retaliation within several minutes. In our human society, we may spend several days, months, or even years to blow the whistle, and the situation may already be too late for the victims. This also comes back to our ability to think or overthink about our own life and potential responsibilities. Sometimes we really need to learn from our animal friends and try to follow our animal instinct. Take action first if you find it to be appropriate!
I completely agree with you, humans simply overthink everything and don’t necessarily decide to do the right thing for personal purposes. I believe humans, by nature, are more selfish, and think of everything as a benefit or a loss to themselves. Taking the dog lying on the highway as an example, for most humans driving past the dog, they have a limited amount of time to think of the cons and the pros for saving the dog, and the cons heavily out-weight the pros in this scenario. Most humans value their lives higher than others, especially lives of animals. On the other hand, when a child is lying on the ground, others don’t try to save her life either, sort of for similar reasons – they don’t necessarily see any benefits of helping her. I agree, humans think a lot, especially about the consequences, however from my perspective, this is what makes us human. In addition, often humans think that since other people will help the baby, then why should they do it themselves. This essentially results in everyone not taking action since everyone thinks someone else would do it.
Yes, we overthink. We overthink a lot. Instead of putting efforts where they are necessary, we waste a lot of time and energy thinking about consequences. It is weird but we are in a way taught to think like that. In general circumstances, I am pretty sure you heard a lot of people asking you, “Are you sure?” even if it is the right thing to do. Also, we don’t necessarily do anything unless it has some benefit for us. May be we should cater some time to (over)think about helping people around us. Interesting post!