Decisions in Daylight and Darkness

Speaking of daylight and darkness, in darkness many things are imagined. Troubles are magnified, and symptoms are also, and worries become more weighty and worrisome in the hours of night. And decisions made in darkness may be distorted (and decisions also in sorrow).

Sometimes people feel pressed and persuaded to make serious decisions without taking time for proper perspective—people in sorrow, people who have lost their loved ones, people who are discouraged and despondent, people who are facing some acute crisis.

They may suddenly decide, for example, to sell, to quit, to move elsewhere, to change the whole pattern of their lives, to give up interests or activities. Sometimes they are hurt, confused, numbed for the moment, and are less able under the circumstances to make safe of mature decisions.

But with time and reflection, the first sharpness of sorrow subsides. With time and reflection calmness and reason return, and perspective comes into fuller focus—to give a safer sense of values. Decisions made at more leisure, and in the light, with the clouds a bit cleared, tend to be safer decisions.

There is another kind of quick decision that should be shunned; decisions made in anger, in the heat of resentment, decisions that ignore reason and are made in hot emotion. We should never let heat rule our heads, and issue rash ultimatums that we are likely long to regret.

Time is a great healer. Patience is a factor of safety, and perspective shows up the true shapes of things and reveals the true values, and in the discouragement of darkness, or in the heat of anger of in the acuteness of sorrow, it is seldom safe to make far-reaching decisions.

Let time give its perspective; let time give it s healing touch; let time soften sorrows and let time appraise the values and suggest the solutions. Let time take time to tell us whether or not the feelings of the moment would be the same feelings that would move us in the same direction if we thought things through.

Let time defer the decisions of darkness and discouragement until we can look at things in the light. The clearness of daylight with calm consideration is a safer time for decisions.