THE THINKING MAN’S CROCKPOT

“Marmalade toast, hot chocolate, pack a gym bag, go to sleep,” I said to myself as I drove home. I rounded the corner, swung into my road, and parked up, beneath the lamplight.

I think I might be processing the world too slowly. Everything moves so fast, and hardly anybody seems to stop and listen any more. Or if they do, perhaps they’ve worked out how to hear and talk simultaneously, or just to work things out by starting to speak.

I don’t think I’m very good at that Internet-speed verbal conversation malarkey. I feel like I’m programmed to wait for a space in a real conversation where ‘so-and-so is typing...’ or chatting... rather than jumping in, one heartbeat before their full stop. Any more than two people and I’m done, it seems.

Same with prayer meetings. Once I’d gotten over the embarrassment of ‘keeping warm with menopausal hot-flushes’ as a starter, I looked blankly at Henry and tried to focus. Then one of the ladies told me that men go through the menopause too but not to worry about it. I stared at the floor.

Later, I had two things I felt I should say, but could say neither: not because I was afraid, not because I was doubtful, or even still shocked about the hot-flushes, but purely because I had processed my two downloads too slowly and there were no heartbeats between which to interject them. So where I had succeeded the other week and sounded pompous, this time I had gone home wondering.

Then, I’m caught in the balance again, aren’t I? This isn’t supposed to be about me.

Somebody once told me that if God gives you something to say then you should say it and discharge your responsibility; then it’s no longer yours to carry. The reverse is also true then. Yet I don’t know why God would give anything to say to a silence-loving slow-cooker like me if that’s the case! The fact that He does must mean there’s something for me to learn... or perhaps all of us, whether we’re crockpots or flash-fryers. “Either way,” I reasoned, silently, eyes closed, hands gripped together, “Please let what You’re saying be heard.”

How do you speed up your thought-cooking time? If you’re wired for deep, how do you communicate fast enough for the surface-waves? If your connection is slow and your bandwidth limited, how in the world do you operate at WhatsApp-speed?

Well. Perhaps I’ll just have to keep thinking about it, as deeply or as quickly as I can muster. For now though, it’s probably time for marmalade toast, hot chocolate, packing a gym bag, and going to sleep.