Waiting

There seems to be something admirable about decisiveness.

We praise people who can think on their feet. Make the call. Seize the opportunity. Act while everybody else is still thinking about it.

And sometimes that is exactly what is required.

But I wonder whether we have confused being decisive with being quick.

They aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Some of the worst decisions I have made were made very decisively.

I just made them too soon.

There is another difficulty with waiting.

Sometimes we don’t want to.

Something happens and every part of us seems to demand an immediate response. We are angry, hurt, excited, frightened or perhaps simply convinced that if we don’t act now, something will be lost.

The immediate picture can be remarkably persuasive.

But the immediate picture isn’t always the whole picture.

Sometimes we need to look a little further down the road.

I think there is a battle that takes place in all of us at times. Our emotions want an answer now while another part of us is quietly saying, just wait.

That doesn’t mean our emotions are wrong.

If we are hurt, we are hurt. If we are angry, there may be a perfectly good reason for being angry.

But feeling something immediately doesn’t necessarily mean we have to do something immediately.

There is an old expression, shooting from the lip.

I’ve done it.

Probably most of us have.

And the trouble with words is that once they have left your mouth, they belong to the world.

You can apologise for them. You can explain them. You can say you didn’t mean them.

But you can never unsay them.

Perhaps sometimes waiting isn’t indecision at all.

Perhaps it is simply giving tomorrow’s version of ourselves a chance to have a say.

But there is another side to that.

Sometimes we wait when we already know what needs to be done.

We wait because the decision is uncomfortable. Because we’re frightened of getting it wrong. Because doing nothing feels safer than doing something.

Waiting

And somewhere between acting too quickly and waiting too long, there must be a point at which we simply have to decide.

How do we know when we’ve reached it?

That’s another conversation.