Stop Talking to Yourself

By Shaefer (not a self photo)

It happens almost every day. Perhaps it happens multiple times a day. I talk to myself. I am not referring to a sentence or two either. I mean a full blown and engaging dialogue. Sometimes after I am finished I change some of the parameters of the conversation and start again to see if the outcome is different. It usually is. Most of the time the conversation contains at least two distinct personalities; mine and one or two other people (that actually exist) I am projecting from within. It could be me and my wife (or rather me invoking the person of my wife), me and my best friend or me and a neighbor. The voices could even be of me and the guy walking toward me on the street who I do not knowyet but for whom I have created an entire life story based upon what he is wearing, how he is behaving and whether or not he has a nice or mean face.

These conversations are sometimes a trial run for a conversation I need to have with an actual person in the future and sometimes they are fantasies of the conversation I wished I had with that actual person. I always sound so good in these rehearsals and reenactments. Yet, I find the reality isn’t nearly so brilliant, quick witted or fair. The reality is sometimes abysmal.

As a younger man, these imaginary encounters were sometimes all I had because I never seemed to have the courage and skill to engage in real-life dialogue. Those I did have were so fundamentally awkward and wayward that I stopped talking for a while my freshmen year in college. I did not have the audacity for brutal honesty which might offend or cause pain, nor did I have the skill to apply a diplomacy that might curb the blunt edges of a raw truth. I wrote a lot more back then as a result, and I talked to myself…a lot.

Yet, over time my competence and confidence deepened with my mistakes, failed attempts, and meager successes to engage in what some term “crucial conversations.” Yet, it is the imaginary conversations that are a constant pitfall. In trying to project or forecast a given conversation what often might begin as a mild assumption about what or how the other party might respond becomes, through the rehearsal of rebuttal and response, an emotional conviction about that other person. I begin to judge or condemn a person for things that have only been said in my mind. Thus, I enter the real version of that conversation with faulty assumptions navigating my logic. It is like entering a peace negotiation with loaded guns.

I have discovered that it is easiest for me to be direct, and while I continue to hone my diplomatic skills my conscience dictates I deal with things head-on. Some people have the gift of taking conversations slow and easy, approaching with caution and great care. I neither have the skill nor the emotional make-up for this usually. I grow weary very quickly of carrying the thoughts and attitudes of conflict within me to take too much time to resolve them. I cannot endure their weight long, so I tarry not. To each their own.

Still, often time and space does not permit a quick resolution. It is in the delaying moments, hours, days or weeks that my mind wonders. In its wonderings it chances upon “theory”; theoretical outcomes of the delayed conversation and all its permutations. That is when I unknowingly begin to load my guns. There is only one solution for this. I have to pray.

The conversation that must be had is the one between me and God, and I have to have it every time those “theories” arise from within. I cannot allow my heart to be tainted toward an individual based on virtual dialogues. It is then I hear the Spirit telling me to “Stop talking to yourself.”  It must be that I pray for the person with whom I must broach a dialogue and reason with God on behalf of the relationship I have with the said individual for peace to ensue.

The “slacker” gene meets the anvil.

My oldest son has a number if things in life that come very naturally to him. He has a great capacity for math, science and deductive reasoning and for that reason much within his academic career has come easily. When you couple this with a lack of competitive spirit and distaste for doing things that require greater effort you have the makings of a potential "slacker", for lack of a better term. He gets by in school and is contented with that. He could, for all intents and purposes, follow in the footsteps of his father who perfected the art of doing the least possible work that still allowed for the greatest amount of time, energy and freedom to do the things I actually enjoyed. It must have been such a frustration to my parents who, despite their best efforts and encouragement, could not persuade me to try harder at those things I didn't like doing, such as homework, studying and organization. My oldest son is a stark contrast to my second son who is as competitive as they come; second only to my wife. He plies his hand to schoolwork with a determination that might lead you to believe that his spelling homework had somehow insulted him and he will master its erratic rules and pronunciations as punishment for the slight. He sometimes even looks angry as he studies. It's as though he is attacking the homework. He almost gets nothing but perfect marks in school. The two of them represent me and my wife almost exactly.

As I have matured there have been growing attempts and more frequent successes in shedding the "slacker" within. I have discovered, however, that my tendency toward lethargy has more to do with my obsession for control than it does with laziness. I can control those areas where I am naturally gifted, while the ones where I am not naturally inclined are more difficult to control. And once I can no longer determine the outcome I am not interested in participating, and if I have to participate I do the least possible amount of work. It is easier to say "I don't care" than "I have failed". Besides, growing up taught me that apathy was cool and casual disinterest was interesting.

While I no longer ascribe to these principals I continue to struggle with them. I hate failure, I hate loss of control and therefore I often reject those aspects of life where those two eventualities may exist. I have many such areas; dancing, basketball, Spanish, spontaneous emotional expression… the list could go on. So this brings me back to my eldest son. Since he was three years old we have enrolled him in team activities like soccer or baseball. He has loved neither. I will not bore you with the despair it has sometimes caused me, but at this moment in his life athletics hold little interest to him, which is perfectly fine. However, his tendency toward indifference at the areas of life he doesn't naturally excel is not good. So we helped him look for an activity in which he had some initial interest. This turned out to be Karate. When he first put in his "Gi" (karate uniform) which was black with a white belt he looked awesome. It was as if I was bringing him to Superhero training. This initial euphoria was tempered by his instructor who, while not cruel in any sense, meant business. Karate was not easy. Karate was hard.

My son's initial interest waned quickly. However, a few times a week we spend time going through all the forms and practice executing all the moves. He has learned to suffer this patiently and without complaint. For weeks going to Karate was a chore for him. And then something happened- he started to excel. During sparring matches he knew what he was supposed to do. As the instructor opened every class reviewing the seemingly infinite variants of all the forms my son was one of the only ones able to keep up. One class the instructor brought him up front so the class could watch him execute each form. My son began practicing with greater willingness. Last week the instructor pulled my wife aside and told her he needed to get my son out of the class because he couldn't learn anymore and the other kids were simply copying him instead of learning for themselves. He asked if she had time to test him for the prized "yellow belt". So in front of all the kids from his class and the kids from the incoming "yellow belt" class he tested my son. When Isaiah was finished he bowed to the instructor who told him he was now a "yellow belt" to the applause of his now former class and his new class of cohorts. My son called me right away to tell me of his victory.

I don't know that athletics will ever come naturally to him, yet that is of no consequence. He has learned something at a young age with which I continue to struggle. No amount of words could convey to him the lesson. He had to experience the drudgery of repetition, hard work and public mistake making in order to understand the lesson. We grow through heat and pressure, until we are malleable and easy to reform and change. One can imagine God as a blacksmith heating us to unimaginable temperatures where his hammer and anvil eventually changes us and makes us strong. God often talks of refining us through fire (Prov. 17:3; 1 Peter 1:7; Rev. 3:18). To refine a metal is to heat it to extreme temperatures until the impurities of the metal can be removed leaving the remaining matter pure. The manner in which we are refined, remade or changed is out of our hands- we are not the potter or craftsmen. Going through such change is an act of faith in our Creator. It is character building and it makes us stronger, certainly. Yet, to let go the reigns and simply go where we are commanded to go also creates trust and intimacy between us and God.

When the time comes for my son to contemplate the trials he will need to endure in becoming a follower of Christ later in life- a process over which he will be able to exert little to no control- I hope he recalls the anvil and what it can make or remake. I hope he will trust the one wielding the hammer as he has trusted me in his endeavors with Karate.