“We’ll talk soon.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I can.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
All these were things I’ve heard that never came true from people who I thought meant them.
The word soon is a dangerous word. Not in it’s actual dictionary definition, as in or after a short short time. But in how it is used to push something off, to pretend to place importance on anything that isn’t truly valued.
The minute a guy tells me he’ll see me “soon” instead of say, next week, or Monday. I know it’s not going to happen.
When we pass people we see in the grocery store and say “We should hang out soon”, we both know it’s not going to happen.
And when we lay in our beds on Saturdays in our pjs and think, we’ll work out “soon”, it’s almost a fact that that’s not going to happen.
We do this almost unconsciously, because to be honest and speak our intentions is to be cruel, and we want to see ourselves in the best light possible.
To know that we don’t want to see the person who really likes us makes us feel like bad people, so we use “soon” to put it off, indefinitely, without even really knowing that’s what we’re doing. But, I propose, we stop this business of saying things we don’t mean. Of making plans that never come to fruition. Because if we’re not honest with other people about what we want, or how we feel, we can’t expect them to do the same for us.
If we say “soon”, let’s turn it into next week. Let us stop letting ourselves off easy while we put off other people, and the things we know need to be done. Because whether we like it or not, “soon” is going to come. And when it does, we won’t be ready, because we’ve spent so long avoiding it.
So let’s stop saying “soon”. Because life isn’t happening “soon”, it’s happening now.
Let's meet it where it is.
