Who You Are vs. What You Do
When I was eight and left a cup of milk too close to the edge of the counter, my mom would say, “Josh, that glass of milk is an accident waiting to happen.”
An accident waiting to happen.
Waiting to happen. We all know what that means. And, it doesn’t only apply to accidents. A situation can be almost anything “waiting to happen.” A triumph waiting to happen. A laugh waiting to happen. A good time waiting to happen.
Who You Are, as opposed to What You Do, is what’s waiting to happen. You may be generosity waiting to happen. That means your default behavior, what will happen if you don’t engage your willpower to do something different, is generous. You may be kindness waiting to happen.
Some people are a personal slight, an injustice, or victimhood waiting to happen. Those people will always find and comment on an injustice. There’s a lot of victimhood waiting to happen these days. It’s a very attractive strategy because it gives someone the moral high ground and–especially these days–it can be very powerful.
Most of What We Do flows from what we are waiting to happen. Sometimes, through an act of will we do something that is different from “who I am waiting to happen.”
It’s also possible through a new awareness, a change in circumstances, or practice for a person to change who they are. We’ve all seen this. Heck, we’ve all experienced this. Then, we become something different waiting to happen.
That we are all capable of that kind of shift is very good news.
