When you linger over a decision, hoping that the inevitable will somehow go away, the only person you are fooling is yourself.
I realized that when my seven-year-old Mac laptop died an ignominious death last week. It had become cranky over the last few months, crashing intermittently, programs being non-responsive, taking forever to do the simplest tasks, and don't even get me started on the download speed.
About a year ago I had to install new RAM, which brought me to 4 GB, and that helped a little, but not much. I kept nursing my system along, not wanting to spend the money for a new one, but also getting into the mindset that it was good enough and that I could manage. I might not be a power user or gamer, but with the changes in technology and our use of it over the last seven years (think youTube, streaming, etc), you don't have to be to have issues with an old computer.
Finally last week, I realized I couldn't ignore my systems shortcomings. It crashed several times, refused to cooperate a few more, so I went and bought a new one. I brought my external hard-drive backup, which had seemed to be merrily backing up every hour and handed it over to the techies at the store to transfer my files. Alas, that is when I found out that my computer had left me -- perhaps not physically but virtually (or if you want to make a human comparator let's call it emotionally). There had been no backup for 3 months.
I won't get into all the details, but my hard drive was corrupted and thankfully, with all the brainpower of the techies at Apple, they were finally able to transfer my files after 4 days.
This computer episode made me think about how so many decisions in life we hold off on making because we figure that we can make it work for a little longer, and/or maybe if we ignore it that it will get better. I see people (including me) doing this time and time again, holding off on dealing with a fractured marriage/relationship, an intolerable job, a client or supplier relationship, or the myriad of other things that can challenge us.
Yes, you can nurse it for a while, "upgrade the RAM," ignore the frustration that is wrought, and just figure well, this is good enough. We believe that if we wait long enough things will get better, but the converse is often the reality.
And then what happens? Well, we may still be physically present in the relationship, but emotionally we've mostly checked out. There is the old adage that the person has one foot out the door. And if you have one foot out the door, what's keeping your other foot from following?
Pretending that things will get better is nothing more than sticking your head in the sand and assuming that the "threat" will be gone or the situation will have changed once you resurface, but it always comes back. And by the time you realize this, you may find that some amazing opportunities which had presented themselves are gone.
My computer knew before me that it was time for it to go to that electronic happy place in the Cloud (sorry I couldn't resist :)). It decided that three months ago, but I lingered. And that lack of action almost caused me a bit of a catastrophe -- a significant amount of lost data.
I intend to take the lessons that my sage, tribal elder of a computer taught me and reflect on other areas of my life where I may have lingered too long. Perhaps you should as well!
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