If time is all you look at, you never see what time is all about. Timing is everything, and everything is a matter of timing-but only in a certain sense. If you simply go from one time to the next and bounce from one event to another, you never see the big picture. But how can you develop a good sense of timing? Well, strange as it may sound, the best way to understand time and to use it well is to look beyond time. These are just a few examples of how the right move depends on timing. More often, though, leaders have the opposite problem: They are quick to think it’s time for war, when it’s time to give peace a chance. Chamberlain couldn’t see that, but Winston Churchill could. Chamberlain’s goal, he said, was “peace in our time.“ But it was not a time for peace it was a time for war.
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Adolph Hitler. Timing is everything in the affairs of nations. From big decisions to small details, timing matters. When you’re getting ready for a garage sale, you have to decide whether it’s time to keep various items or time to throw away. When you’ve lost something, you have to know when to keep searching and when to give up and hope it turns up later. When you’re in the middle of a project, you may have to decide whether it’s time to build on previous progress or time to tear it down and start over. Timing is everything in daily decision-making. Relationships require a proper sense of timing. If you think it’s a time to speak and the other person thinks it’s a time to be silent, there could be trouble. If you’re convinced it’s “a time to embrace,“ but the other person thinks it’s “a time to refrain from embracing,“ it can be mighty awkward. The Bible says, “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day … is one who sings songs to a heavy heart“ (Proverbs 25:20). If somebody has just been struck by tragedy, it’s no time to be jolly or tell jokes. If there’s a happy celebration going on, it’s no time to be serious or somber. There’s a time to weep and a time to laugh. Timing often makes the difference between failure and success. An employee needs to know when it’s time to ask for a raise and when it’s not. An investor needs to know when it’s time to buy and when it’s time to sell. A farmer needs to know when it’s time to plant and when it’s time to harvest. When people are only a decade away from the average time to die, should they deliberately go against natural timing, use various medical treatments, and make it a time for a child to be born to someone of retirement age? It can be done, but should it be done? Is it fair to the child whose parents are likely to die before the child reaches adulthood? There’s a time to be born and a time to die. Thanks to recent discoveries in medical technology, a woman in her sixties now has a chance to give birth to a child. Perhaps the best-known passage about timing in all of world literature is in the Bible at the beginning of Ecclesiastes 3. Timing is everything, and everything has its time. Bad timing can make a blessing feel like a curse. I agree with the Bible verse that says, “If a man loudly blesses his neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse“ (Proverbs 27:14). I’m not a morning person, so these early-morning cheerleaders just make me grumpier than I already am.
Some people leap out of bed before sunrise, smiling and singing and saying happy hellos to everyone they meet. There’s a time to be happy and a time to be grumpy-and in my opinion morning is definitely a time to be grumpy.
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