Brain Food #850: Saying no as a means of saying yes

We are like the seasons

Thoughts of the day

Amidst a longer writing project, I am reminded of how saying yes to one thing means saying no to another. Sometimes the greatest acts of procrastination can be found in the wrong kind of action.

What drives people to poor time management may not be the incapability of doing anything, but the desire of wanting to do it all:

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.”
— Sylvia Plath

Perhaps this urge has to do with how we define ourselves, or how we want to be perceived in the world, a means of identity-making. We resist saying no because we may seek approval, as James Hollis suggested: “Feeling guilty for saying no, for example, is really a defense against the possibility that the Other will be displeased, thereby activating the immense reservoir of emotion we all carry.”

‘I don’t know and I’m afraid.’ Our singular existence and finite time mean that is impossible to say yes to everything; wanting to do so can be a form of fear, but not necessarily that related to missing out. It may be the fear of finding out who we really are, or meeting ourselves further down the path drawn by our choices.

As nature enters spring in full swing, the trees leave their winter selves behind, slowly blossoming into life. As Virginia Woolf wrote in Orlando, “What then? Who then?’ she said. ‘Thirty-six; in a motor car; a woman. Yes, but a million other things as well.’” Every human possesses a certain amount of self-complexity that needs to be honoured and explored. But like the seasons that change, there is a time for everything. We should learn to recognise when the time is now, and what for. And then, saying no will become the most affirming means of saying yes.

Orange Blossoms, 1890, by Vincent van Gogh

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