Immediacy

A lot of people think I'm impatient. I'm not. It's just that I was brought up by a Swiss mother who accepted nothing but immediacy when it came to responsiveness to anything from being called to supper to knowing what to do in a medical emergency. She was a paediatric sister, and no doubt the worst scenario was the death of a baby when it could have been avoided. So I admire this trait: immediacy.

If you apply it as a rule, which I prefer to do, but don't, as not many can get with the pace, things tend to work.

Alas, I live in a country where things tend more and more not to work. This seems to be a global trend, although Africa is extremely good at things not working.

You get things to work by attending to emergencies immediately, effectively, sustainably. Pain of all kinds, physical, emotional, intellectual is a signal of emergency. Physically, I am very well, yet I suffer emotional and especially intellectual pain daily.

I have found that the best way to deal with intellectual pain is using humour. I think, therefore I joke. However, this becomes tedious and boring.

Testing thinking against another person's thinking will take you to a mentor. I had a really good one decades ago, whose stride still awes me. When you find that what's necessary is to stretch your legs and start to run if you don't want to miss the chance in front of you, you've learnt what immediacy requires.

All my life, the sense of immediacy has enveloped me. I like this sense very much, and I recognize it has not always endeared me to others. Yet I recommend this path: when you follow it, things tend to happen.