On Fridays, we think big thoughts!

Giving yourself the time to think those obnoxiously big thoughts. The kind that can throw you in to a state of mind where you feel truth.

We’ve had a class at my university where one of the participants is significantly older than the rest of us. He’s retired, is writing on a book and wanted some kind of connection and a context to work in.

The class itself has been a lot about the verbal connection that we have to one another. Our professor is educated in pedagogics and rhetorics and so we’ve been given an opportunity to exercise our verbal capacity.

For the last assignment, we could choose to make a speech as part of the assessment. He spoke up. “There’s no way that I’ll get all of my work in to a 20 minute speech. I’d need at least an hour for all of that.”

He couldn’t have the hour.

“You’ll have to practice then. And of course it can be done, you’ll make it done. I believe in you.”

He eventually came around, and is going to give the speech in a couple of weeks. What really struck me though, was the thought of knowing so much about something, having such a big thought, that you couldn’t express it in a set piece of time. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that.

And maybe it’s all about his inability and insecurity of not doing the idea and concept justice. Some kind of perfectionism. But I really do think that there are such big ideas, thoughts that hold such a mass, that we can’t express them in too short of a time span.

What if we’d think more of them? What would happen if we could practice thinking them enough for them not to feel that grand? Or at least for us not to feel like they’re too grand.