EVAPORATING THOUGHTS

Hey does this happen to you? I feel like it’s been happening to me for a long time. I’m talking about that feeling when you have a very clever, often brilliantly perceptive thought, but it’s not got any words, and then, when you try to speak it out, halfway through articulating it - the thought just disappears into smoke, leaving you looking lost in the middle of a sentence.

My most notable example was the conversation I was having with an atheist about faith many years ago. We were playing chess I think, and he (the kind of person who would draw mathematical equations on pebbles with a sharpie at the seaside) was several steps ahead.

“I think it’s quite easy for some people,” I said, “… to have faith in faith.” What I must have meant was that some people idolise their belief system so much that they’re unwilling to budge, even if an angel wrote instructions in their pudding. But the thought had already left my brain, and was being replaced by a fog about whether the two of us were using the word ‘faith’ differently and whether what I’d just said was about as much use as a kamikaze’s life-jacket. I had let the original thought slip away. Also I think my bishop was in danger from the knight on C7.

“What does that mean?” asked the atheist. It was a genuine question, if sprinkled with a teaspoon of scorn. Not being rude to you militant atheists out there, but some of you serve up the teaspoon of scorn very well, and you know it.

“I um, I don’t really know,” I replied.

And at that point, I had lost my point in the weeds.

I still think it’s a good point, though. A lot of people are so devoted to their faith that even God can’t persuade them they’ve missed the point of it. Real faith can only come out of relationship, not religion.

Anyway. That’s just an example. I got foggy in the middle of a great thought, as though I’ve tried to multiply four-digit numbers in my head and I’ve lost hold of one of the steps I needed to add to the next bit. And I feel like that happens a lot.

I wonder if it’s to do with brains working at different speeds. When I look at exceptionally smart and eloquent people, they are somehow able to come up with the most profound thoughts and express them with delicacy and precision, choosing exactly the best words for the job, in real-time. It’s as though their brains are busily working out what to say, how to say it, and how to prompt the next thought - all at once. I take my hat off to them - that would take me a lot longer. That’s why I sit quietly in most conversations until I’ve cooked up my thinking - as though my brain has said: “Right Matt, here’s the deal: you can have fast food and you can have good food, but you can’t have both, so maybe get back to the kitchen…”

Fair enough, brain.

Of course the other problem with slow but deep brain speed, is that the conversation can move on without you completing your thought, and then it’s like bringing out the starter after the mains. I’ve never fully known what to do with those things. I probably should start writing them down.

Perhaps though (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) I already have.