The idiom “a penny for your thoughts” can be traced back to Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) who first mentioned it in “The Four Last Things,” an unfinished workwritten circa 1535 and published after his death:
As it often happeth that the very face sheweth the mind walking a pilgrimage, in such wise that, not without some note and reproach of such vagrant mind, other folk suddenly say to them, ‘A penny for your thought.’“
Thomas More, a devout Catholic who resisted the Protestant Reformation in England and who was eventually beheaded (and subsequently canonized), intended to imply that when a person seems lost in thought or distracted, it was fitting to offer them a penny if they would explain themselves or unpack their burden on you. Almost half a millennium later, that phrase is still popular.
There are other sayings involving pennies. For example, “in for a penny, in for a pound,” “a penny saved is a penny earned” or “penny-wise, pound-foolish.” But this post is not about pennies, but rather about thoughts. My thoughts. Your thoughts.
We have hundreds, perhaps thousands of thoughts a day, according to some sources. Regardless, research from Harvard University notes that almost half of our thoughts (47%) are concerned with things that are nothappening to us, and frankly may never happen at all. Researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert write. “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.” They add (ibid.)
“Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn’t going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain’s default mode of operation.”
But then, who knows what our dog or cat is thinking as it stares out the living room window for hours each day? Is it thinking about dinner? A rabbit? Maybe, it is working a problem in regression analysis? Or just in some TM state? Or nothing at all?
So, the normal mind tends to wander if left unchecked. I know this for a fact from my prayer life. Unrelated thoughts tend to creap in when I’m trying to commune with God. The Harvard researchers found a correlation between a person’s happiness and the degree to which their mind wanders. But which of these two is the chicken and which is the egg? They discovered that:
Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects’ mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness.”
So then, what sorts of things do we think about when we’re stressed out, or trying to focus on our homework, or while sitting in the doctor’s office? Or driving our car? Medium lists five different areas:
Worries and concerns. These thoughts deal with our job, our relationships, possibly our health.
Planning and problem solving. This is pretty much self-explanatory. We have situations in our lives that require reflection, or complicated matters that must be analyzed.
Memories and reflection. Often, we relive happy—and perhaps not so happy—experiences. We consider or reconsider choices that we’ve made.
Fantasies and daydreams. This includes sexual fantasies, and thoughts about winning the lottery, perhaps. I often enter the Home and Gardens Television (HGTV) dream house sweepstakes. They run for several months several times a year after which someone is chosen to win the currently featured house, whether it is in Stowe, Vermont; Key Largo, Florida; or Vail, Colorado. I try to picture myself and Deena walking through the house, wondering what winning it might mean to our future.
Social interactions. Here, we consider friends and family and other relationships, perhaps with colleagues. How does everyone get along at work? Do we have a tyrant for a boss? How can we improve our performance as a team, etc.
These five areas are in no particular order. And, one category may be more descriptive of some people than another. For example, a widowed senior citizen who has trouble with his or her own health may spend more time reminiscing about the past and obsessing over their health than a young couple planning to start a family. People living on fixed incomes are move concerned about how to pay for their daily bread rather than planning a vacation cruise. Focusing on social interactions concerning work may spill over into fantasies and daydreams if some colleague is flirting with you. Specific concerns of people in the Ukraine or Somalia, Bolivia or Japan may be vastly different but still fit into one of these categories nonetheless.
The Bible addresses the importance and consequences of our thoughts. For example, in Genesis 6:5 the author writes: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Jesus made little distinction between thinking adulterous thoughts and acting on them. So, under this hypothesis, a person can be guilty of adultery without actually acting on these musings. President Jimmy Carter tried to make this same point many years ago and readers thought it was a hoot! They just did not understand. Jesus says in Mathew 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” Some people have murderous thoughts about a family member, a supervisor or colleague at work, their graduate advisor or someone of some other race. They are poisoning their minds and eventually it will spill over into other areas of their life until they are completely consumed. They lose executive functions. Borrowing from the book “The Shepherd of Hermas” (a first century book that was not selected to be included in the Bible):
1[33]:5 “For if you take a little wormwood, and pour it into a jar of honey, is not the whole of the honey spoiled, and all that honey ruined by a very small quantity of wormwood? For it destroyeth the sweetness of the honey, and it no longer hath the same attraction for the owner, because it is rendered bitter and hath lost its use. But if the wormwood be not put into the honey, the honey is found sweet and becomes useful to its owner.“
Wormwood is a bitter herb, thought to be poisonous and hallucinogenic as well. It was banned in the U.S. until 2007. What the author is saying is that a little envy, anger, or doubt that is allowed to take root in your heart (mind) will grow if left unchecked, and that you will be worse off for letting it fester. It creates an environment that is incompatible with God’s word or the Holy Spirit’s presence.
There was a time earlier in this century when I was the faculty advisor for a college newspaper. I would take my students to Orlando ro Chicago to college and university newspaper conventions. There were always 700 or more institutions present, from the USAF Academy to Yale, to Stanford, Michigan State, and Grayson College where I worked. The standard back then in college journalism was a world where there were no secrets. Everything was revealed. That’s a pretty scary thought! But fledging journalists work towards transparency and this was their ideal.
Nothing we do in secret is truly secret. Proverbs 15:3 says “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.” David says in Psalms 139:2 “You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. We may be able to fool others. We may be able to fool ourselves. But we cannot fool God. And those who carry around a secret understand exactly what sort of burden a secret can be. It can be a prison where no light gets in and where you can’t tell night from day.
In our system of law, governments can actually punish people for what they think. The legal term for this is premeditation. According to the Legal Dictionary, premeditation is “planning, plotting or deliberating before doing something. Premeditation is an element in first degree murder and shows intent to commit that crime.” Further, “Premeditation requires that the defendant thinks out the act, no matter how quickly—it can be as simple as deciding to pick up a hammer that is lying nearby and to use it as a weapon. Thinking about some deadly act in advance in your mind could be the difference between first degree murder which calls for the death penalty and manslaughter which does not. So, if the state can judge you on what is in your heart, how much more can your Creator do so?
We cannot reform ourselves. Pilates or Yoga cannot take a dangerous dude and turn him into a pillar of virtue. Only the Spirit of God can do this, and repentance is the first step. The first step in the process whereby an alcoholic stops destroying his family, liver and livelihood with booze is to admit that they have a drinking problem. An entertaining romantic comedy to watch that brings this out is Sigourney Weaver’s “The Good House.” Once we admit to God that we are corrupt and invite Him to transform us through faith in Christ, we can expect a positive change over time. It may take a while. Those of us who garden know that some weeds are easily pull out, while weeds with other root systems require some work to remove. Sometimes the process disturbs the soil around it. But slowly faith will strangle the life out of whatever worries us, plagues us, or keeps us from being the person we can be.
