You how how it is. The event starts at 8PM, but you're calculating the best time to arrive. Never too early, but exactly how late? The computation is both science and art. Not only for your social life, but your political life as well....!
Cicero put it this way: "All life is a matter of timing." Woody Allen added "80% of success is just a matter of showing up." When you apply this thinking to new ideas, timing takes on special significance. Usually we like to be the first on our block to embrace a new idea so long as it turns out right, but gee-I-never-liked-it when it turns out wrong. History bristles with examples. Fire...the wheel...the alphabet....the Wright Brothers...the Edsel....the 40 to 1 shot at the derby...all those sub-prime mortgages.
A friend's 100 year old father-in-law once confided with a smile, "I've seen many changes in my life, and I was against every one of them." A wise after-thought. But the real payoff is in wise-forethought. Which candidate will have the right stuff? which campaign will put us on the right track? which piece of legislation or which nominee will achieve the right results? oh, and which cablecasting or blogging screamer is the right one to shut off?
Come to think of it, though, some after-thoughts can also be a matter ot good timing. For instance, when is it time to keep cherishing national memories and myths, and when is it time to crate them away? Here too history bristles with examples. Our old frontier spirit of conquering the land and everyone on it...the tall-in-the-saddle rugged individualism of Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill....unregulated free enterprise...empire building...racial profiling...corporate farming...small town Americana.
The problem with some cherished memories and myths is that, after all, they did help get us here. It's never easy to repudiate your own past, to tear pages out of the national photo album, to admit some of the old movies had it wrong. And yet, here again, time is a player. As Ecclesiastes teaches" There is an appointed time for everything...."
In the end, the case for acting with good timing comes to rest before each of us. As individuals and as citizens. It ticks there inviting us to use it in our own decision-making. In democracies, the invitation belongs o everyone. And while millions of us have made the right decisions at the right times, equal millions have really botched it! Rather than investing our time in celebrating one another, how often have we cannibalized one another? The vulgarian packs in Washington, the high-pad shouters in the media, the gun toting gangs in the streets, right down to the way we love to eat our own celebrities from a Mel Gibson to a Lindsay Lohan and now to an overwhelmed Susan Boyle.
All of which brings us back to the case for good timing. In other words -- knowing which bridges to cross, which top burn, and exactly when best to do it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You make some interesting points, but as I get with each year I grow older (and I hope wiser) I'm starting to believe timing is only relative AFTER the fact...when we look at things in the big scheme of things long after they have happened.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, did you hear Susan Boyle came in second place!
John, I can't argue with that. As they say say, hindsight is always easy, foresight is what's tough! However, think of the person lucky enough to actually possess such foresight. It's a gift that only few of us have. However -- like the gift of a great voice -- the person still needs to refine it. Here's hoping you're refining yours.
ReplyDeleteAs for poor Susan, this is exactly what I mean about cannibalizing our own. Sad....