A Loss That Can Reach You

There is probably something you have been about to do for years. Not neglecting — preparing. Getting ready. Waiting until the timing is better, the savings deeper, the moment less exposed. You are not lazy about it; if anything you think about it constantly. It sits in the back of the day like a room you keep meaning to enter. Here is a quiet test for whether the reasons are the real ones. Imagine the thing were suddenly guaranteed to succeed — no chance of failure, the outcome fixed in your favor. Would you still be too busy, too tired, too not-ready? If certainty would dissolve the exhaustion, then the exhaustion was never what kept you out. Something else was, and it was wearing exhaustion’s clothes, because exhaustion is respectable and the real thing is not. The real thing is that as long as you have not entered, you cannot lose. The preparation is a room with no exam in it. And a life can be spent there, fully occupied, never once examined. The disease has a name The Unabomber,…