I think. We all do. Most as much as we must. Others as much as we can. Is an avidity for inquiry blessing or curse?

From earliest consciousness, I worshipped the conspicuously wise. I studied Alfred Eisenstadt’s photo of Sir Gilbert Murray as the most delectable of outcomes. Why an eight-year-old from a household where scholarship was, if not pitied exactly, condescended to, should ogle such an ancient, solitudinous image, I have no idea. Peace at the last, maybe. Escape from emotional turmoil. The stillness of knowing. The embrace of eternity. (Santayana enticed me similarly.)

Like most romantic fantasies, this one’s baloney. Thinking does not conduce to calm. The opposite. The more one thinks, the more one thinks oneself out of cozy complacencies into the unnerving void of nihilism. Nothing, come to think of it, makes sense. Neither does sense rule human conduct – as each day’s headlines confirm. Humans, far from God’s gift to earth, seem more a sick joke. If such bleak conclusions make their author sound gloom-sick, fear not; in person I’m glad, in love, happily composing these sentences (how am I doing?). I relish my life and cling to it. I’ve even in my later years evolved an invigorating God, who cheers me on. Gladness, though, can’t contradict observation. That I enjoy being does not mean I can justify it. I enjoy coffee ice-cream too (Häagen-Dazs), while ruing its result.

I love thinking and hate where it leads me. Tolstoy famously wished himself a tree – an absurdity, but I get it. Thinkers I revere writhe like Laocoon beset by snakes. I read Paul Krugman every day – you should too – he’s one of my essential guides to America’s Armageddon; but man, does he suffer from awareness! Yes, he’s funny about his anguish, railing like Rumpelstiltskin, yet we wince at his pain.

I love thinking, as I do ice cream, for its flavor, not its nutrition. I do not feel myself advancing toward Sir Gilbert’s (or Santayana’s) exhausted calm. My glum findings don’t enhance my companionable appeal. The more I gaze, the greater my amazement at human stupidity and cosmic futility. We just weirdly, tragically are. Yet how fascinating, enthralling, each life a page-turner, if we take the time to observe. My mind’s movement through time surprises me. I’m not that smart but my cupidity for discovery makes each dawn Christmas. In every direction, mysteries and miracles, bounties of maybes, one need only look.

I recommend thinking as one might a gut-churning roller-coaster ride, for the sensual thrill, no practical advantage. Thinking does not better me or my world – not measurably. But it does link me with other spirits who share this compulsion. Granted, there can be no resolutions, no solutions, but there is the joy of sharing. The beautiful youths of Boccaccio’s Decameron cannot thwart the Plague, but they can sport and laugh and love.

Human nature aggrandizes its self-importance. Businesspersons think business makes the world go ‘round; ditto, sanitation workers; ditto, golfers. Whatever we choose to do we’re convinced is worth doing. In my career years, I rated news publishing the noblest calling.

Thanks to thinking, I make no such claims for thinking. Yes, humans have thought beautiful thoughts – witness Bach, Shakespeare, my smart-phone – but we’ve also thought ourselves into hatreds, cruelty, self-jeopardy. Dogs, trees, daffodils do less damage.

My parents would have excoriated such observations as discourteous, thus scandalous. I was raised to parrot pleasantries, not speak my mind. Maybe that’s what made old Sir Gilbert my beau ideal. He communed with his ancestors, said what he saw, and lived till he died. Bliss.