I Was Answering Questions Nobody Asked

Somebody asked me a simple question last week. What time were we heading out.

I gave them a paragraph.

I explained where I had been that morning, why I was running behind, what I had been dealing with, and how none of it was going to affect the plan. Then I answered the question. Four words. It should have been four words the whole time.

I have been doing that for years and I did not notice until recently.

Where it comes from

When you spend long enough in a place where every word gets written down and read back to you later, you stop answering questions. You start defending against them. Somebody asks what you did today and part of you hears a different question underneath it. What are you hiding. What are you not telling me. Prove it.

So you over-answer. You get out in front of it. You explain the thing before anybody accuses you of the thing, because you learned the hard way that an unexplained gap gets filled in by somebody else, and they never fill it in kindly.

That reflex kept me upright for a long stretch. I am not going to pretend it was useless. It was armor and I needed armor.

But armor is heavy, and I am not in that room anymore.

What it costs

Here is what I did not see for a long time. Over-explaining does not make you look honest. It makes people wonder what you are worried about.

A man who answers a simple question with a simple answer reads as settled. A man who answers a simple question with a defense reads as somebody with something to manage. I was doing the second thing while trying hard to look like the first thing.

It also wore me out. Every ordinary conversation turned into a small trial where I was the only one who showed up prepared.

And it put weight on people who never signed up to carry it. My friend did not ask about my morning. He asked what time. He got a closing argument.

What I am doing about it

I am practicing the short answer.

Not a cold answer. Not a shut door. Just the actual answer, and then quiet, and then letting the quiet sit there without me rushing in to fill it.

It is uncomfortable. The first few seconds after a short answer feel like standing there undefended. Every part of me wants to add one more sentence, one more clarification, one more piece of proof nobody asked for.

I let it sit anyway. Usually nothing happens. They say okay. We move on. The trial I was bracing for never convenes.

That is most of what this year has looked like. Not big moments. Just noticing a reflex that used to be necessary, checking whether it still is, and putting it down when it is not.

The part that is faith

I keep landing on the same thing. If I believe God already knows the whole record, then my job is not to keep reading it out loud to people who are not judging me.

I still put the record in public. That is different. That is a choice I make on purpose, once, on my own land, and then I walk away from it. That is not the same as explaining myself over and over to whoever happens to be standing in front of me.

One of those is a record. The other one is a nervous habit wearing the record's clothes.

I can tell the difference now. Most days.

Where I am today

Somebody will ask me something today and I will feel it start. The paragraph will begin loading up behind my teeth.

I am going to answer the question they asked.

Then I am going to be quiet and let that be enough.