Thanks to Jonathan Dodd for this week’s submission. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
People say I talk too much. Or, rather, nobody ever says I talk too little. When I was much younger and more sensitive I used to think they were thinking I talked too much but weren’t telling me, which made me nervous, so I talked even more.
Sometimes I would gather the courage to ask a question. “Am I boring you?” They were usually nice enough to say that I wasn’t, and it was all interesting stuff. When I was feeling good, that comforted me. Otherwise it was a good way to fuel my paranoia.
Perfectly normal paranoia
Actually, now I think about it, I was never paranoid. I decided that either people are really after you or they aren’t. Thinking they are after you is something you do inside your head and is usually a product of whether you’re feeling confident or not.
I suppose what this is moving towards is a better definition of what talking is all about. I know there are people who use a lot of words but they don’t have much meaning, or maybe the meaning is obscure to the listener. I once had someone say to me – “I heard you got divorced. You did say you were going to, but I thought you were just talking.”
Hearing that was a genuine surprise. I suddenly realised that not everyone talks for a purpose.
Received wisdom
When I was 15 I had a revelation. Up to then my head was full of received wisdom, most of which was stuff adults had told me when I was a child. Most of which was their opinions rather than actual information.
The revelation was that I suddenly started to hear opinions coming out of my mouth that I hadn’t known I was thinking before. And what’s more, I found I agreed with what I was saying. It turned out that my unconscious mind had started thinking before my conscious mind got the habit, and it was rather good at it.
How to find out what you’re thinking
I’ve been talking ever since, and listening to what I’m saying, often for the first time, and I still check whether I agree or not. I can’t remember a single time I disagreed.
So if I talk too much, it just means I’m finding out what I’m thinking.
Pasta and home-made pesto
I once lived in a rented house in Cardiff with a Coventry-based Sicilian who introduced me to pasta and home-made pesto (surely irrefutable proof of the existence of a benign god…). We used to go out drinking, I modestly and he expansively. He used to tell me stories about his life in the army and then as a mercenary, which made my hair stand on end.
One evening, in his cups, he told me what my trouble was.
Trouble usually finds me
“You know what your trouble is?” He asked. “Your trouble is you think too much. Do you know what my trouble is? My trouble is I think too little.”
There was a pause before my mouth opened and I heard myself say – “Yes, you’re right. What we should do is split and mix our minds somehow so you’d think more and I’d think less.”
He actually got up and waved his arms at me.
“That’s what I mean! You’re doing it again!”
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
