your words are better when they end

or, the temptation to incomplete thoughts

There is nothing so frustrating as an incomplete thought.

That is, I sit and stare at a transcript, eager to transform an interview into a podcast episode or a short video. I pour through lines and lines of text-on-screen, highlighting the most insightful, heartbreaking, inspiring, poignant smattering of words. And then, just as that beautiful line of prose is building to a crescendo, the words fall away, vanishing like a minivan that’s careened off a cliff into a patch of smog and darkness: I can’t see where it’s gone, and I know it’s not coming back.

An incomplete thought.

I can hear them in real-time now. At least, my ear has adapted to the sounds of incomplete thoughts like a musician’s to a sour note.

“The real point here is—well, first I have to tell you, I should really explain—there was this one instance, a few years back, that hammers the point home…”

Perhaps it’s not a car going off a cliff. The thought is eventually complete, but the point is lost, spread across too many words like a solitary can of paint tasked with coating a whole city worth of walls. Or, is it a runaway train, still on the track, but without anyone to master its velocity? It rolls and rumbles on with little regard for its queasy, increasingly uncomfortable passengers.

Slow down. Wait. You’ve missed the stop. You’ve lost the thread. You have to master the speed.

I see these thoughts on the page and I hear these thought spoken aloud and I feel myself succumbing to the same sad mumbling, rambling, trailing off…

And I wonder: Why? What is this thought pirate that keeps ramming my ship off course? What is this dark spirit that carries my words away from their intended destination?

I hear myself speaking; I hear my sentences fracture; I hear half-completed ideas fighting for dominance; I hear the mosh pit full of words jumping all over each other; I hear myself breathe a sigh of defeat. I hear my own frustrated silence.

And I see in the eyes of my counterpart a fizzle of interest, a spark of concern, a blink of confusion.

Slow down. Wait. You have to master the speed.

I wonder if you, too, find your words all a jumble, your thoughts trailing off or bumping into one another and piling up the cars of the train. I wonder what mischievous spirit is at work in the engine room of our minds, insisting that there’s not enough time, that our thoughts and ideas and carefully chosen words aren’t worth the precious moments it takes to speak them aloud. That if we don’t rush to the end there won’t be anyone left standing to care.

A dark spirit.

I wonder if those jumbled words are simply the manifestation of a terrible belief: What we have to say doesn’t matter, isn’t worth it, is stupid and insignificant and we’d be better off throwing all our thoughts on the ground in a chaotic heap than to carefully arrange them into a bouquet of beauty and insight.

A dark spirit indeed.  

There is nothing so frustrating as an incomplete thought. That is, to those who love us, care for us, look up to us. To the God who delights in us. To a world hungry for our carefully chosen words.

It’s true—we don’t have all the time in the world. So, let’s take the time we do have to say the things we want to say. And to say them well.

And another thing:

This week I wrote about J.R.R. Tolkien’s challenge to our status quo over in my other weekly newsletter, “Now Discern This.” Give it a read.