“Life is a game that must be played.” How do you win at this so-called game of life? You don’t, there is no winner or loser in this game of life. Its either you live or you die without fully living. To fully live one must overcome the opponents within themselves. The biggest opponent to your-self is the one inside your head. Over-thinking too much or reflection at the wrong moment can lead to your downfall. Heinrich von Kleist believes that “reflection, or thinking something over, finds its proper moment after rather than before an act.” His opinion stems from the premise that life is essentially a contest with fate. Holding this view sets up everything and every situation as a win/lose situation. He believes that mental exercise at the outset of an action can only serve to cloud the issue or lessen the effectiveness of our emotional responses. My assertion is that there are situations where you can’t think before you act, and that in most, if not all situations, you should contemplate afterwards anyway.
There are instances in life when pre-thinking or reflection before an event is just not possible nor would it be logical. The first that springs to mind is an emergency or potentially dangerous type of situation—an accident for example, where quick thinking and/or quick action is a must. If, say, you are driving down the freeway and someone swerves into your lane or a child runs into the path of your car, it would be insanity at best to ponder what course of action to take or to think, “Now what did the driving manual say to do when this happens?” From a personal experience, in which I was driving and my brakes weren’t working as I was coming up to a stop sign where there was a person crossing the street. At that very moment I had to act quickly, without thinking I drove the car up onto someone’s front yard and into a tree instead of into another human being. In that moment, I didn’t have time to think what my possible options where, I just had to act. The time...