Gee, if I'm NOT over-thinking it, then that's the first thing in 60+ years that I HAVEN'T over-thought. I must be slipping.
I think that people of different psychological types just have different tendencies, inclinations, desires and even values.
Being told that I go too far into the details has
no effect but to make me wonder why ANYONE would ever dive less deeply into the minutest details than their ability and time permit.
But apparently the world is made up of 90-98% people who DON'T relish, delight in, cherish and value most highly all the lovely, finicky details that I so love. Inexplicable!
But true.
Fortunately, it's easy for me to understand the inexplicable way that most people let their eyes glaze over and walk away just when the discussion gets interesting (down to the nitty-gritty details that actually control everything and answer most questions).
They shake their heads in dismay at what I do, the same way that I shake my head in confusion and dismay when they turn their back on "the good stuff" and accept some generalization or rule of thumb lacking detailed any "why" and "how" at the molecular level.
How can they feel that way?
As if all that mattered were getting some job done, not probing the Universe's infinite variety and detail down to the ultimate underlying physical reality, at which level everything makes sense, even if "the real world" is so complicated that generalizations and rules of thumb are the only fast way to get the cows milked and the higs slopped.
But where's the fun in that?
I think it is valuable to remember that, when we tell someone ELSE that they are doing too much of something, or not enough of something, what we are really
saying is that WE don't value the way THEY think, and that what they enjoy and value most highly is unimportant.
If we remembered instead to pay attention to the details, we would remember that we really MEANT was that we don't UNDERSTAND your way of thinking and why it is "valid" or sometimes has uses, or that different people DO have different values, even if we look at their values and disagree, or can't even conceive of how someone COULD value those things, instead of the things that we "know" are "really" important.
Such things are seldom or never "right or wrong". They are more like "my personality type differs from your personality type, and I don't understand how or why anyone could be different from me".
When we remember that detail, we can communicate without offending or dissing each other.
(That rant has been building up for 15-20 years, both online and in person. It's not directed at this discussion, it's really directed at something that happened in DG many years ago. Someone asked how many square feet there were in their rectangular raised bed. I converted the feet-plus-inches to decimal-feet and multiplied Width X Length, and gave the answer. Maybe my mistake was in showing my work. Someone complained that this elementary-school-level math was "too technical" and too much detail. That's been like a pebble lodged in my brain for many years. I guess with 52,000 members, not even in ATP/NGA can everyone be happy all the time.)
I get those things that stick with me, too. With very poignant events, there's a circle that runs around in my head that goes a little something like this:
