What are you thinking about? Nothing?

Here is an extract from my much-awaited first novel. Edwin is brushing his teeth on the morning of his birthday and thinking about not revealing his thoughts.

As he pondered mid- brushing, he digressed into that minefield of what thoughts and actions we normal people would never admit to. For example, at 11 this morning when his mother, keen to kill him with conversation,  would ask what he had  done so far today, would he include: contemplating masturbation and not shaving; putting plastic into the green bin; collecting his prescription for statins; the fierce argument with his ex-wife whose birthday call was a poisoned dart masquerading as a friendly pat; putting washer fluid in the wiper system of his car; chatting to Phil next door about how mossy his lawn had become; getting an earful from a hoodie whose snorting gob on the pavement he had tutted at? All these things were to happen in the next two hours but pass unremarked upon.  Ed recalled the times without number that mothers and lovers had asked the unanswerable ‘What are you thinking?’ The word nothing is a shortening of ‘Everything and nothing’ which is a further reduction from ‘Everything that is on my mind at the moment which is of private concern to me and nothing to do with you or anyone else – or if it is, it would be hurtful to say.’ Nothing is a much better way of saying ‘Mind your own fucking business’.

Most of what we think we don’t reveal – and we don’t want to. Practically it would be impossible to convey the information of the teeming synapses of our thoughts anyway. Much of thought doesn’t fit language either so explaining ourselves is clunky, hard. Most thoughts come unbidden and are wildly irrelevant to what we are doing, saying and thinking at the time. Inappropriate even. You know what I mean. With our nearest and dearest, in our most intimate moments, embarrassingly odd thoughts gatecrash the party and create a zeitgeist that’s impossible to share.

So my character Edwin is not alone in his reflections on his inner and outer worlds. And it is true that the most common answer to the question , ‘What are you thinking?’ is ‘Nothing.’ We can’t be bothered to explain the idiocy of our thoughts. We might upset and embarrass ourselves and others. We might reveal ourselves in an unflattering light. The reasons are endless but, perhaps, the main one is that we don’t want anyone to have unlimited access to our private world. We don’t like the idea that someone else might understand us as well as we do ourselves. So we hide, conceal, don’t reveal.

When I was masterminding an internal ‘audit’ of a school’s pastoral system, a pupil questionnaire included the statement: There is an adult at school who knows and understands me well and I would trust. Then the tick boxes ranging from strong disagreement to strong agreement. When we analysed the responses we found that almost all responses waxed lyrical about the school’s care – save for this one. When we delved a little we realised that 14/15 year olds don’t necessarily think adults know and understand them well. We changed the question of course.

We adults are no different are we? We like to think of ourselves as unique. Well we are because we don’t change too much from cradle to grave. My dear mother, who died this year, was an expert in asking the what are you thinking question when we were growing up. She used it at times to provoke; at times to show care. Just a few months before she died I was driving her home after Sunday lunch and to fill our companionable silence, I asked the question: what are you thinking?

She looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Nothing.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘Done enough thinking,’ she said and we continued on our silent journey.