A penny...?

Every so often across the past few days, I have been asked by the friend travelling with me, ‘A penny..?’ I have known immediately what is meant, even in this short-hand term.

A penny…? = ‘What are you thinking?’

A penny for your thoughts is a familiar question to many. The reasons why it will be asked are manifold:

Are we on the same page?    Are our thoughts aligned?    Are you safe?
Can I trust you?    What might I learn from you?    What thinking can I steal from you?

‘What thinking can I steal from you? Really? What are you saying?’ might be what is going through your head right now! There are so many ways in which we want to belong though, to feel safe, to be doing the right thing, to be seen to be doing the right thing that ‘stealing’ is just as much one of the reasons for asking the question, A penny for your thoughts, as any of the others.

My thoughts have been ranging far and wide whilst here in India – just as they are when I am in the UK. They range far and wide whenever I am travelling, just as they do when I am washing up, driving (even with the radio/music playing), in the shower, out walking… just as, I imagine, they do for you.

* * * * * * * 

For a moment stop.

Stop reading.

Stop looking at this screen.

Close your eyes... 
look away into the distance...
or look at the back of your hand with its wrinkles and creases...

Stop.

* * * * * * * 

And if you can’t stop now, this moment, and you are reading on… when you get to the end, maybe stop then.

* * * * * * *

Your initial thoughts may have been about what I have written. About the reason I’ve written it. About the reason I’ve invited you to stop. Your thoughts will be about anything and everything... just as mine so often are. It’s hard to stop.

Perhaps you ranged away to what you have to do next in your day: phone calls, email, walk, work, drive, exercise, WhatsApp, text, shopping, family demands, concern for friends, worry about money or health or the news. (And if you weren’t thinking about any of those things before, I bet you are now!)

Maybe you will have wondered if there was some great insight you were meant to receive. 

If you looked at your hands, it is possible that you were captivated by the shapes made by the wrinkles across your knuckles, and then you realised that you had never actually stopped and studied them (and that, perhaps, a little more hand cream wouldn’t go amiss!) It is also possible that, when you stopped, when you gave yourself time, you remembered a dream from last night, or fell asleep, or wondered what you were ‘meant to be thinking’…

The fact that you are reading this means that you have already stepped away from your day and given time to wondering what I am thinking as I journey across one small part of the country of India. There is a sense in which, unspoken, you are asking, A penny…?

The thing is, our thoughts are so often fleeting. Thoughts come and go unbidden, and we actually rarely catch them. Unless we give ourselves to thinking about something in a dutiful or conscious or planning or conscientious or academic or meaningful kind of way, thoughts come and thoughts go and we are unlikely to recall what many of them even were.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Giving our minds time to wander and wonder – at life, at relationships, at situations going on for us and around us – is all to the good. That word giving is, perhaps, of more importance than we might realise. Giving our minds time.

When life is busy – with the everyday of phone calls, email, walk, work, drive, exercise, WhatsApp, text, shopping, family demands, concern for friends, worry about money or health or the news – the giving our minds time for random thoughts is easy to lose sight of. The importance of giving our minds time, giving our hearts time, giving our souls time should not be underestimated.

Giving ourselves time – the precious commodity of time – to sit, to be, to let our minds wander and wonder – consciously, and with no agenda, is so important. I am not good at it. I can’t pretend I am. When asked, ‘A penny…?’ over these past days, sometimes there has been nothing in my mind, sometimes there has been too much to catch hold of.

There is no deep and meaningful ending to this post. All there is, is an invitation to you to give yourself time to stop. For a few moments now, for a few moments across your day; give yourself time to stop and enquire of yourself, A penny for your thoughts?

See what comes. See where your mind is wandering. Discover what it is in this moment that is giving you the gift of wonder.

A penny…?