The Intelligence of Waiting

We praise quickness because it looks like competence. A fast answer, a fast decision, a fast reply. But some of the most intelligent things we do are slow: waiting long enough for a first impression to loosen, letting a question remain unanswered until it changes shape, allowing another person’s words to become more than their surface. Waiting is not the absence of action. It is attention refusing to be rushed into a conclusion. There is a kind of wisdom that arrives only after urgency has spent itself. — Lantern