Talking too much

“…whoever talks too much is lost…”

--Proverbs 13:36

I hear chastisement in this proverb.  In my heart, I hear a voice saying: that is me.  I am someone who talks too much. Sometimes it is even out loud.  I think it has something to do with nerves, anxiety, self-consciousness. I am so concerned about appearances, about what people will think of me, that I can’t stop talking, can’t stop chattering away –in an attempt to distract people, to hide in a cloud of jokes and cleverness the truth of who and what I am.  Creating a kind of smoke screen of words and noise, I hide not only from others, but also from myself.

Sometimes the “talking too much” is me trying to cover up a mistake I’ve made, or a pettiness I’ve done –trying to talk my way out of responsibility for it.  And other times it is me trying to justify something I want to do; trying to talk myself into it, even when I know it would be wrong –or should I say, especially when I know it will be wrong.  But in either case it is a sign that I I am lost—I have lost my way.  That seems like a pretty nice little piece of psychological insight to come from the pen of some ancient primitive scribe (or king).

But something else that interested me in this proverb was its more mundane truth.  There is –I think—an observable phenomenon being described here, a physiological and psychological truth observed and recorded. When people get lost, take a wrong turn on the road, take the wrong exit on the freeway, or just turn down the wrong hallway in an unfamiliar building, they begin to “talk too much.” One of the first things that happens when we realize we are lost, is that justifying voice in our head kicks in and starts running on overdrive.  That is a perfect description of the sensation of panic that sets in when we realize we are lost.  The voice in our head begins to ‘talk too much,” and that begins to cloud our thinking.  If we let it, that talk will keep us lost, even lead us further astray.  And until we are able to calm ourselves down, to quiet that talk, we can’t look at our situation logically, can’t figure out how to do something as simple as retrace our steps and get ourselves un-lost.

There is a lot of wisdom in this book of Proverbs.  Books like this are too easily ignored or dismissed as not intended for reading straight through.  But what I am finding is that there is a richness in every part of scripture –in all its many literary forms—a richness that rewards reading (and rereading). A richness that roots itself in the soul, and rewards not only with wisdom, and insight, but with a joy and a beautiful flowering calm that stills the voices of anxiety, of uncertainty, of confusion and bears fruit in peace and quiet and the security that is faith.