I Asked And Then I Kept Talking

You asked a good question and then you ruined it in about four seconds.

The question was: what is it actually like there. Which is a genuinely open question and it took some thought, and you had been meaning to ask something like it for two weeks, and you finally asked it on Sunday.

And then there was a gap, and the gap was about four seconds long, and into it you said: because your mother thinks you sound tired.

And that was the end of it. He said something about being tired. You said something about sleep. And the question you had been building toward for two weeks was gone, and neither of you noticed it happen.

Here is the thing about that four seconds, and it is the reason this is worth an entire article.

He was about to speak.

That is what a four second gap is. It is not an absence. It is a person deciding whether to say the real thing, and the deciding takes between three and eight seconds in almost everybody, and the real thing arrives at the end of it if the space is still there when it does.

You have been closing the space at second four, every time, for about a year.

Let thy words be few

There is an instruction in Ecclesiastes about speaking that is aimed at prayer, and the mechanism in it applies everywhere.

Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. (Ecclesiastes 5:2, King James Version)

Look at the word rash. Not wrong. Not foolish. Rash, which is a word about speed rather than content.

The problem being described is not what a person says. It is how quickly it arrives. And that is precisely your situation on Sunday: what you said was not bad, it was affectionate and true, and it arrived four seconds too early and cost you everything.

You are dealing with a matter of timing and not a matter of wisdom, and one affectionate sentence has never once been the problem, only the second it arrived in. Ecclesiastes 5:2 puts the fault in the rashness rather than in the words, and the Holy Spirit is the one on a phone call where a good question got closed.

And notice the strange middle clause: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth.

That is a statement about the size of the other party. The reason given for keeping words few is that the one being spoken to is larger and has more to say than the speaker does.

Which is not a bad thing to hold in mind about a nineteen year old, either. He has a whole life in that room that you have not seen. He has more to say about it than you do, by an enormous margin, and the arithmetic of who should be filling the space follows directly from that.

You have somebody in front of you with far more to say than you have, and a father with a good sentence ready has never once had more information than the son he is asking. The written word grounds the fewness in the size of the other party, and the Spirit of God is the one who reorders who fills a silence.

Why the gap is unbearable

Now let me name what is actually happening in those four seconds, because it is not impatience.

The silence after your own question is the most exposed a parent ever is.

The question has been asked. It is out. And now there is a gap, and in the gap there is a possibility that he says something nobody can fix, or that he says nothing at all and a father finds out that his son does not want to talk to him.

So the gap gets filled. And the filling is not thoughtlessness. It is protection, and what it protects is the man who asked.

You are protecting yourself in the one second where nothing needs protecting, and four seconds of exposure have never once been a danger to a father. The Holy Spirit is the one who stands with a man inside the most uncovered second he has, and Ecclesiastes 5:2 names the haste of the heart rather than the mouth.

You are protecting yourself and calling it conversation, and four seconds of exposure have never once been a danger to anybody. Ecclesiastes 5:2 names the haste of the heart rather than the mouth as the thing to watch, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in the most exposed four seconds a father has.

And here is the second thing, which is what he has learned over a year of this.

He has learned that the questions do not require answers.

Not consciously. But a young man who has been asked forty open questions in a year, each of which was closed by his father within about five seconds, has developed a reflex: wait, and it will resolve itself.

You are looking at a reflex and not at a temperament, and a young man who learned to wait has never once been a young man who had stopped caring. Ecclesiastes 5:2 puts the whole correction into restraint and nothing else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who undoes a habit that took a year to build.

So now he does not even begin, because there is no point beginning something that will be finished by somebody else.

That is why he seems to have less to say than he used to. He has the same amount to say. He has stopped starting.

A quiet young man is not a verdict on a father.

You are able to teach him that a question here actually needs an answer, and a young man who stopped starting has never once been a young man who ran out of things to say. The Spirit of God is the one who undoes a reflex that took a year to build, and Ecclesiastes 5:2 puts the whole correction into a matter of restraint.

Count to twenty

So here is the thing to do, and it is deliberately absurd, and the absurdity is what makes it work.

Ask him the question, then count to twenty in your head before you say one more word.

Twenty. Not five, not ten. Twenty, because your calibration is currently set at four, and a small adjustment will not survive contact with the actual discomfort of an actual silence on an actual phone call.

You are able to hold a space open past the point where it is comfortable, and twenty seconds of counting have never once been a longer silence than the one you have been ending at four. It is written in Ecclesiastes 5:2 to let thy words be few, and the Holy Spirit is the one on the call while a father counts and says nothing.

Here is what will happen, and it is worth knowing in advance so that you do not panic.

Around second six, he will probably say something small. A partial thing. Do not take that as the answer and do not respond to it. Keep counting.

Somewhere between twelve and eighteen, the second thing arrives, and the second thing is the one you have been trying to get at for a year.

You are able to wait past the first answer for the second one, and a partial reply at six seconds has never once been the thing a young man actually had to say. Scripture puts the reason for few words in the size of the other party, and the same Spirit who put it that way is with you between second six and second eighteen.

And if twenty seconds go by and nothing comes, that is fine too. Say something ordinary and move on. Nothing is lost. But it will not happen as often as you expect.