The ins and outs of navel-gazing

“The man without a navel still lives in me.” — Thomas Browne, English author

From the Cambridge Dictionary: Navel-gazing — the activity of spending too much time considering your own thoughts, feelings or problems.

From the Urban Dictionary: Navel-gazing — engaging in self-absorbed behavior, often to the point of being narcissistic.

If you type “navel-gazing” into Google and hit the “All” tab, you’ll get 1.46 million hits, depending on the day, I suppose. I looked at some of the sites, and while a lot of complacent self-absorption is going on, actual discussion about actual navels is rare.

A s...