Don’t Wait
When to Act. When to Non-Act. When to be a Hero.
There were many factors behind my decision to leave my job. I belabored it for week, counting the costs, weighing the options. In the end, it came down to a gut decision: take the risk, or stay the course. It was a personal, uncertain choice. One that I struggled to make. One that I’m still struggling with.
Death Compells Us
Ultimately, I told myself: I’m almost 50. Realistically, I have ten to twenty years left in my career. Is this what I want to be doing for the rest of it? The answer came back to me: a resounding no.
Today, it’s common for people to jump from job to job, role to role. Untethered from institutions, they move like squirrels leaping from branch to branch. But many of us in public service have had a different experience. We may spend decades within the same organization, growing roots, building community. We are more like the owl that roosts in the same hollow year after year. Leaving, for us, can feel like an unmooring.
Lately, I’ve been reading The Five Invitations by Frank Ostaseski, a book about what we can learn from death. His first invitation is simple: Don’t Wait. Don’t wait to pursue your dreams, to say what you need to say, to forgive who you need to forgive. Don’t wait.
I’ve been sitting with how to reconcile this with Buddhist teachings on nonaction. Thích Nhất Hạnh famously said: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” And yet, in these dark and chaotic times, I often find myself asking: Why isn’t someone doing something?
The Wisdom of Nonaction
There is wisdom in nonaggression, in seeing the value of patience, stillness, silence. One of my management principles has long been: Don’t make yourself the center of the drama. The ego tempts us to intervene, to fix, to save. But action taken from ego often causes harm. We cast ourselves as heroes in stories that don’t belong to us.
Sometimes the wisest thing is to wait. With time, the situation may resolve. The person asking for advice may already know what to do. In many of my consulting projects, my role wasn’t to fix anything—it was to hold a space where the solution could emerge from within.
But there’s a difference between patience and passivity, between discernment and avoidance.
Especially now, with so much unstructured time in my life, I’ve been reflecting on a teaching often attributed to the 16th-century Chinese poet Liu Wenmin:
“To be able to be unhurried when hurried;
To be able not to slack off when relaxed;
To be able not to be frightened and at a loss when frightened and at a loss—
This is the learning that returns us to our natural state
And transforms our lives.”
This speaks to me. I’m a nonaggressive person by temperament. I avoid conflict when I can. At work, I would stew over interpersonal issues for days. Even after acting, I’d worry about the ripples I might have caused.
When to be a Hero
And yet, looking back, I see many moments where acted when others didn’t. When I spoke up against a broken process, defended a colleague, or took an unconventional path. These were moments of principled intervention, and I don’t regret them. Sometimes we are called to be the hero of our journey.
I think of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. They rented a dance hall, hired a DJ, and filled the space with friends and family. Truth be told, I wanted to be the DJ. I even offered: I’ll rent the gear, let you approve the playlist. They didn’t bite. “We want you to enjoy the party,” they said.
The DJ was terrible.
At first, I thought I was just being bitter. But then he started singing. Crooning, really. People began to complain. I asked my mom, “Is this what you want to be listening to right now?” She said no.
So I stepped in. I told the DJ, firmly but clearly: You have to stop singing. Just play some Motown. He got the message. Party saved.
Sometimes we have to intervene.
There are moments where principles become action. For me, those include:
When someone is being harmed
When a lie is being told
When the long-term cost of silence outweighs the risk of speaking up
But not all interventions are so tidy.
Acting in Uncertain Times
One morning, I had just gotten off the T and was walking across the plaza when I saw two teenage girls shouting. It escalated. Fists flew, hair was pulled. I stepped in. I tried to separate them. They kept swinging, even around me. We fell to the ground in a heap.
Eventually, another adult helped, and they stopped. I stood up, dusted off, looked around and saw dozens of bystanders just watching. Professionals on their way to work. Not one had moved.
Was I foolish? Should I have waited? What if one of them had a knife?
I don’t know. But I do know this: those were children. And we, adults, have a moral responsibility to each other. The greater mystery to me wasn’t my own risk, but their inaction.
Right action requires clarity, capacity, and context. But often, we must act under uncertainty. And in truth, we may not know whether we were right until much later, if ever.
When we act mindfully, we hold the consequences lightly. We learn what we can without clinging to outcomes.
What is Your Fourth of July?
We live in a time of deep uncertainty. A time when it seems increasingly difficult for us to discern lies from the truth. People are being disappeared without due process from our city streets. Others are being persecuted for speaking out against war and genocide. On this Fourth of July even as I enjoyed a beautiful summer day with my family, I found myself reflecting on the transition our country is going through.
Gramsci comes to mind “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
So too does this Thoreau quote that my old friend and colleague reminded me of after my first Substack Post: “I have lived for the last month - and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience—with the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at first what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country.”
As I go through a transition and letting go my former career identity, there is another deeper transition happening within me. It has been happening for sometime. For twenty years I served my country. Now, I am asking myself what it means to be an American. What myths have I attached myself to? What pride? What shame? What do I owe my country? What would it mean to leave?
This is not intended to be a political blog, rather a personal journal about transition, leadership, and service. Yet, I find the same questions of right action that apply in the workplace and our personal lives also apply to how we act in the world. Should we fight or flee? Speak or stay silent? Stay or walk away?
I don’t know if leaving my job was the “right” decision. But I do know this, in the end it was death that compelled me. What does death ask of you?
We have only so much time on this Earth.
Don’t wait.