Traffic lights turn red sometimes. And when they turn red, we have to stop. If we carry on when there’s a red light, it could lead to an accident. We all know the light will soon turn green again, and that it’s much better to wait for it to turn green.
We sometimes have to face traffic lights in life as well. There are times when the best thing to do is just to stop, to do nothing. Tiny Gigantic tells us in the post “The importance of unstructured time” that ‘sometimes the only way to do really good work is to stop “working”, and to stop thinking about whatever it is you call work.’
In almost everything you do, there are some times that you just need to stop and hold back. And almost all the time, the light will turn green again. We need to learn to wait for the right time to move forward. If you don’t heed the “red light”, moving forward can be catastrophic.
What “red lights” are you facing today? What are you doing that you might be better off holding back?
I read about a study of grammar school kids once. The happiest and most creative ones were the ones who spent the most time just sitting and “doing nothing.”
One of Robert Frosts’ neighbors called him “The laziest man I know.”
That’s cool. I never knew that. Sounds like an awesome study. You have a link?
That’s so true. I think it gets harder and harder to stop in this world though. We need to rediscover how to do it though!