there is no such thing as trying
try to pick that glass of water in front of you, either you do or you don't
That pause
A moment I still think about from my first time in a Costco.
I was maybe twelve. First time there. Everything felt oversized, the aisles, the carts, the idea of buying so much of anything, especially all in one place
An employee was pushing a trolley stacked high with empty cardboard boxes. Took a corner too fast and his whole tower collapsed. Boxes everywhere.
For a second, everyone around us stopped and looked. Looked at the boxes. Looked at the man. Looked at each other.
It’s strange how time slows down in moments like that.
I knew exactly what to do. Leave my cart, walk over, and help. No reason not to and enough reason to.
But I didn’t.
I waited a second too long. He picked the boxes up in front of my eyes and before I knew it, that moment passed, quietly. Almost as if it hadn't happened in the first place.
Nothing changed. We went back to shopping, I went back to trying to make sense of a "Costco" why there was so much excitement around the samples.
But on the way home, the feeling lingered. That pause. That split second between knowing and doing.
Why didn’t I move? The man didn’t need help, sure. But it wasn’t about that. It was about listening to that small voice that says, go and for some reason I never went.
I remember in the moment, trying to be kind to my 12-year-old self. To see that moment not as failure, but re-calibration. The first data point for a quiet rule I still try to live by:
When I feel the pull — even 1% — just move.
No overthinking ... No thinking. No pause. Just walk toward it.
That’s the thing about those moments. They don’t announce themselves. They just appear and are very fleeting.
Looking back, it's in those moments where making action led me to have the life I have today.
Helping others is as paralysis inducing as it is to help yourself. As before, there will be plenty more of those pauses.
Just. Get. Up.
and walk