Waiting...

Tuesday, and a damp not-so-dark drive in this morning. We're in the doldrums of a Pacific Northwest winter. Little dripping cloud icons as far as the weather app reaches into the future.

Maybe it was just that we were coming off several days of unusually cold weather, but yesterday actually felt warm by late afternoon. Just warm enough to stir a longing for spring. It's not all that far off now, is it?

The iPhone music app was also in anticipation mode. Specifically, it was focused on waiting. It should have been in random shuffle for today's commute, but it clearly got hung up on its strangely self-imposed theme. Five tunes, each by different musicians, each song's title beginning with the word "Waiting."

 

Annie Lennox was waiting in vain, The Connells were waiting their turn, Matthew Perryman Jones was waiting on the light to change (aren't we all at this time of year!), and John Mayer was waiting on the world to change (never a very productive use of time). Meanwhile, Sixpence None The Richer was still back in the waiting room. Everyone is waiting for something.

The python was everywhere, everywhere at once, aware
only too much of that ageless agony: its existence.
I am tired, it said; and the stream burbled by.
I am waiting for the recoil, the uncoil, coil of night,
coil of stars, coil of the coldness of the water.

- from Totem Poem [if every step taken is a step well lived] by Luke Davies

or...

believe me we wouldn’t

have resisted anything

but the truth

so instantly and universally

yet we sat there and waited

for something else

which you could say we also got

if you count the mime’s

unpleasant remark

so she wasn’t even a real mime

probably part of what was

clearly just a performance

- from Waiting by J. Allyn Rosser

Me, I'm just waiting to get through the Starbucks drive-through and into my office where I have blocked out a small span of time this morning in which to actually get something done. Meetings are informative things (or can be), but they usually only spin up additional work that has to get done somewhere, some time. If the only thing I calendar is meetings, then I have no space and time for doing the work. It means I need to be intentional about my time, and that means sometimes saying "no."

At a Leadership Snohomish County education day last week I learned that "Yes and no are not emotions." Saying "no," though, often triggers an emotional response in others, so it becomes harder and harder to say "no" without anticipating that emotional response and coming into the conversion ready to respond in kind.

I work in a culture where saying "no" means, "Fine, I'll ask someone else; I'll find a way around you to get what I want." To say "no" is to be identified as a barrier, road block, buzz-kill. Our expectation is that rather than say "no," we should say, "I can't do that, but let me see what I can do to help meet your need." While I fully support the practice of looking for solutions, it is a mistake to turn every "no" into a qualified yes.

We cannot do everything that is asked of us because the needs far outstrip the resource, especially for our time. And though our notions of fair and democratic treatment may chafe at the idea, everything is not equally important. We have to be able to say "no," to not allow that to become an emotion by which we can be manipulated, and to prioritize our time and energy with intention.

And some things do have to wait.

Today's full commute soundtrack:

- Annie Lennox: Waiting In Vain

- the Connells: Waiting My Turn

- Matthew Perryman Jones: Waiting On the Light to Change

- John Mayer: Waiting On the World to Change

- Sixpence None The Richer: The Waiting Room

- Posted via Hermes