“I need time to think.”

This sentence will never become a popular catch phrase from a TV show or movie, part of a clever meme, or something a newscaster or talk show host will promote.

Still and silent, the woman is deep in thought. She’s stepped away from the chatter to a place of calm. Colombiana, art print from Steve Henderson Collections.

Thinking is not something major media outlets want to talk about too much because thinking — deep thinking — requires that we leave the chatter and noise, turn off the box, walk away from the computer, skip the meeting, put down the phone. And if we are doing that, we’re not keeping up on the latest post, bleep, announcement or update.

We’re thinking.

And we have a lot to think about. There are the age-old questions that we too readily hand to experts — religious, medical, political, scientific:

“Why am I here?”

“What is the purpose of life?”

“Why is there so much evil — and what can I, in my small but determined way, do about it?”

And then again, there’s all the stuff that happens day to day, the barrage of information that assaults our eyes and ears and brains. It can be as minor as what some non-entity, famous for what type of conditioner they use on their hair, did last night.

Or it can be late-breaking, catastrophic news that slams into the side of our head and knocks us back into the couch.

Whatever it is, it never says,

“We’re in an overwhelming situation here, folks, and things are changing fast. We actually don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve got a show to put on, so we’ve got to chatter. That’s why we spend so much time talking about what could happen and what might be.

“You know what we all need to do? We need to step away from all the noise, get into a place of silence and calm, and think.

“Feel free to question, to wonder, to imagine, to speculate. You’re as smart as I am. You’re just not paid as much.”

The artwork, Colombiana, shows a young woman deep in thought. We don’t know what it is that is absorbing her so intently, but we do know this:

The TV isn’t on in the background. She’s not scrolling through her phone.

She’s thinking.

Thank you for joining me at This Woman Writes. Posts complementing this one are

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