Come To Think of It

Now, there’s a phrase deserving of another life, come to think of it. It’s one of those throwaway clauses I want to pluck from the doomed to the recycled can.

We say it to announce the arrival of a small but sudden insight or mini-epiphany. Nothing monumental like the discovery of Saran Wrap or 3.14 as Pi. I doubt Einstein said, come to think of it, E=mc sq.

By George, here’s the pair of glasses I thought I had lost last year. No, that’s not quite right either. More like, come to think of it, I shouldn’t have ordered that tiramisu since I’m really not as hungry as I thought I was. Or come to think of it, I already saw that movie you just recommended. It comes with a lightbulb overhead rather than a drumroll.

Coming is the destination of going. The idea has traveled with the speed of a thought. Where did it come from? Another synapse? Left field? A bolt from Zeus? It hasn’t just come, it was welcomed and received just in time.

There’s something faintly subversive about the rush of whatever we have just come to think of. It carries a deviation enough to upset the previous given. It’s a reversal, or swerve, a course correction or at least a whimper of change. Let’s take this side road. I’ve always wondered where it leads.

Do I detect a fleeting moment of admission in it as if a fog just lifted revealing a glimpse of lucidity? Such an ah-ha presents itself regularly but it is not seized until the come-to-Mama/Papa instance. To seek is one thing; to find is another.

Come to think of it, does not suggest much deliberation. More like an intuitive exclamation which bypassed all the filters of self-censorship. Come to think of it, writing this page was a spur of the moment (there’s another expression worth a moment’s pause) act which caused me to come and see what I was thinking about.