The Gravity of Lightness: Field Notes from a Recovering Overthinker

"Still waiting for your comeback on that joke. Where’d you disappear?”
“Sorry, fell into existential dread for a couple of days. Bad WiFi down there."

I used to have this little habit of taking everything seriously and personally. You could throw a joke at me, and I’d laugh at it for sure — but I’d also let it slip quietly into my mind and create a certain kind of chaos. I also had this strange superpower of picking up a random string of words, even ones only mildly directed at me, and hugging them so tight that my peace of mind would wring out like laundry.

In my defense, creative souls are often wired that way. In my prosecution, sensitivity is beautiful until it starts echoing everything too loudly inside you. Then it becomes a flaw. I should’ve spotted the pattern sooner, but well, better late than never.

What made me notice it was my interaction with a friend who excels at roasting people. He also enjoys random wordplay, purely for fun. And as one would expect, every jibe he took at me poked the default setting in my processor, sending me into glitch mode.

But what baffled me was that his words stung, yet his actions were always kind. He would leave no chance to roast me, but was also always the first to lift me up when those words weighed me down. Getting roasted and rescued by the same person was confusing, and I wondered if the problem was his jokes or my tendency to hold on to every word. Maybe that’s why he’d keep explaining, patiently and often, why I didn’t need to take everything so seriously.

He even encouraged me to have fun with words — to try responding to a jibe with another jibe, a remark with another remark. And to my surprise, it wasn’t rocket science, more like playground banter that I actually began to enjoy. For my fellow Bongs, “besh korechi” soon became my favorite.

At some point, he even asked where I drew the line between joke and insult, so he could adjust. And that’s when it hit me that my line was barely visible, often nonexistent. Most times, jokes felt like insults, and the humor evaporated before it had a chance to land. Too often, I was reading between the lines, even when there was nothing there to read.

And so, I decided to pick up the pen and draw my own lines. I began spotting the difference between words that were careless and words that were cruel, between those that carried humor and those that carried harm. I also started letting go of stray remarks that once clung to me like static.

Eventually, I realized that words will always fly around me — some sharp, some random, some playful — but what settles inside me is mine to decide. And I realized that life becomes much lighter if I stop treating every word as a verdict.

Luckily, I learned this in a kind and affectionate environment. But it still wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. Apparently, some wiring runs deep, and some manufacturing defects are too sensitive to be fixed entirely with a software update.

There are still times I bristle at a roast, or feel the urge to overthink and over-explain in response to random words, until I remind myself that it’s not required. Because peace isn’t found in filtering every word. It’s found in trusting yourself enough to let most of them pass through.

And maybe that’s what I need to take more seriously — laughing at myself, and learning when not to listen so hard.