The Power of “That Can Wait”

When did we decide, collectively, that everything has to happen now?

Everything has to be done now. Fixed now. Bought now. Achieved now. Understood now. And if something or someone makes us uncomfortable along the way, we’ve been handed a convenient phrase to justify walking away:

Protect your peace.

That phrase has taken on a whole new definition.

It’s disguised as some grand gesture we make for ourselves, and sometimes it absolutely is necessary. There are relationships, situations, and environments that genuinely harm us, and walking away can be the healthiest thing we do.

But from what I have seen, somewhere along the way “protect your peace” also became permission to run.

Run from accountability.
Run from difficult choices.
Run from uncomfortable conversations.
Run from criticism.
Run from problem solving.
Run from anything that asks us to sit still long enough to consider that maybe — just maybe — we don't have everything figured out.

Somewhere, we really lost the plot. Not a little bit. The whole damn plot.

Someone doesn’t do what we want, say what we want, or act the way we think they should, and for the sake of “protecting our peace,” we abandon people and things that may have actually been placed in our lives to help us learn and grow.

Now, I’m not saying we are supposed to become doormats for other people. Boundaries matter. There are absolutely times when walking away is necessary. But I remember a time when two people with completely different views could still stand in the same room together.

I remember when constructive criticism wasn't automatically considered an attack.

I remember when you had a village that would stand beside you and help you problem-solve or tell you the truth when everyone but you could see the train coming straight at you.

Sometimes that village irritated the hell out of you. Sometimes they were also right. And sometimes realizing they were right was part of growing up.

We Used to Sit With Things

Today, instead of sitting with emotions, failures, critique or in some cases even a pat on the back so many of us lace up our sneakers and run.

I remember when we ran toward things.

We met problems head-on.

Now it often feels like there is no in-between. There is very little sitting quietly and thinking, I could possibly be wrong. Very little considering, Maybe that person has a point. Very little wondering whether two seemingly opposite ideas could meet somewhere in the middle.

And yes, I think social media has played a tremendous role in this.

I was alive and growing before the digital arena ever took shape. Then I was still alive, growing and learning as it came into the fold. That has given my generation an interesting view of both worlds. And over the years, I’ve watched social media evolve into a place where everything has to happen now and apparently everything has to look a certain way while we're doing it.

You see a ten-second reel with an aesthetically perfect living room and suddenly everyone runs faster to Hobby Lobby than they run toward solving an actual problem in their life.

We see the finished room.
The successful business.
The renovated kitchen.
The beautiful marriage.
The vacation.
The organized pantry.
The morning routine.

What we rarely see are the years, mistakes, compromises, arguments, savings accounts, failed attempts, second thoughts, boring Tuesdays and ordinary decisions that came before them.

We consume the result and completely miss the becoming.
And then we wonder why our own lives feel behind.

Maybe It Can Wait

There is tremendous power in learning to say:

That can wait.

That, I believe, is where genuine peace begins. Sitting with something before reacting to it. Thinking before answering. Letting an idea live in your head for a while before deciding it needs to become your next project. Being open to another way of doing something without immediately abandoning your own. Creating a goal and actually allowing yourself the anticipation of working toward it.

Remember anticipation?

There used to be something beautiful about wanting something and not having it yet.

We saved for things.
Planned for things.
Dreamed about things.
Worked toward things.

Sometimes we changed our minds before we ever got there and thank goodness we had enough time to realize we didn't actually want what we thought we wanted.

Now we have somehow moved into a culture where everything needs to happen immediately.

And ironically, all of this supposed peace-seeking doesn't seem to have made us particularly peaceful.

We doom-scroll looking for a sign. We keep scrolling until somebody gives us the answer we wanted to hear. We start a gazillion projects because each new idea feels like the one, only to discover halfway through that half of them or none of them actually resonate with us.

We burn bridges with people who once made up our village.

We fill our homes, calendars, minds and lives while wondering why our cups feel so empty.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to appreciate very little while expecting an awful lot.

The Life That Doesn't Need to Perform

The power of “that can wait” was and I believe always will be one of the things that brings us the most peace.

Peace isn't necessarily found in chasing another trend, starting another project, cutting another person off, buying another thing or trying desperately to stay relevant in a world of parasocial relationships and carefully curated lives.

You can live in a million-dollar house surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of beautiful things and still have no peace when you close the door at night.

And somewhere else, there is a single mom shopping the bargain bins, working two jobs and building a life one paycheck at a time.

She may want more.
She may dream of the house with the white picket fence.
She may be exhausted.

But she can still look around and value every single thing placed on her mantle and tucked inside her refrigerator because she knows what it took to put it there.

After dinner, she looks at the dishes in the sink and says:

Those can wait.

And she gets down on the floor and plays with her children.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, another person finishes dinner and immediately rushes to clean the kitchen because there is content to film, something to post, an image to maintain or another box to check.

One life is being lived.

The other is being performed.

And maybe that is a question worth asking ourselves every once in a while:

Am I living my life, or am I constantly preparing it to be seen?

Leave Room for the Window

Waiting opens opportunities and windows we cannot see when we're staring at a closed door.

Too often, we're so focused on the door that closed that we never notice the window sitting wide open beside it.

So we rush.
We do more.
Buy more.
Start more.

Stack another plate on top of the ones we're already carrying because surely this will bring the peace we're looking for.But even a good waiter knows how many plates can be stacked before the whole thing comes crashing down.

Yet we continue piling things on top of one another, often before finishing what we started, with some strange expectation that eventually everything will somehow work itself out.

Instead of creating clear wants and meaningful goals, we've become increasingly uncomfortable with waiting for anything.

We laugh at the generations before us when they talk about working years toward something. We roll our eyes at the callouses on their hands and the stories about saving money in envelopes.

But maybe there was wisdom hidden inside some of that waiting.

We've gone from the sky is the limit to the sky is falling.

Every inconvenience becomes a catastrophe instead of a learning experience.
Every delay feels like failure.
Every closed door feels like rejection.
Every uncomfortable emotion needs to be fixed immediately.

Because we are desperately trying to control everything:

The outcome.
The when.
The how.
The who.
The where.

And perhaps most exhausting of all…the timeline.

Make Room for the Suddenly

We've burned ourselves out to the point that we don't allow the suddenly to happen.

Those strange, beautiful moments life has a way of delivering when we aren't desperately trying to orchestrate every detail.

The phone call you weren't expecting.
The opportunity that wasn't part of the plan.
The friendship you almost walked away from.
The idea that became clearer because you gave it another week.
The thing you thought you desperately wanted, only to realize six months later that you're grateful you never got it.
The ordinary Tuesday that becomes a memory you carry for the rest of your life.

Those things need room.

And you cannot leave room for the unexpected when every inch of your life is packed with urgency.

Maybe peace isn't something we need to protect quite as fiercely as we've been told.

Maybe sometimes peace is something we create by learning what deserves our attention — and what doesn't need it right now.

Some things need to be confronted.
Some things need to be changed.
Some things need to be released.

But some things simply need time.

The dishes can wait.
The purchase can wait.
The response can wait.
The next project can wait.
The perfectly decorated room can wait.
The answer can wait.

You do not have to know exactly where your life is going by tonight. You don't have to turn every idea into action. You don't have to chase every open door. You don't have to fix every uncomfortable feeling the moment it arrives.

Sometimes you can sit with it.

Think about it.
Live with it awhile.

Let life unfold without constantly grabbing the steering wheel and jerking it in another direction. Because there is a difference between standing still and being stuck.

There is a difference between giving up and giving something time. And there is a difference between protecting your peace and never allowing anything to challenge it.

Maybe the life we're so desperately trying to get to isn't asking us to run faster.

Maybe it's asking us to stop stacking plates. To appreciate what's already on the table. To leave a little room for what we can't see coming.

And every once in a while, to look at something demanding our immediate attention and quietly decide:

That can wait.