A decision, not a vigil

A young man in Ras Al Khaimah has been applying for jobs for eight months. Forms, follow-ups, interviews that go well and then go quiet. One evening he tells his family he will give it one more week and then take whatever his uncle can find him.

On the Thursday of that week, the offer arrives. Just in time, his mother says.

It is a familiar story, and it is usually told the wrong way round.

The offer did not wait, with perfect timing, for him to reach the edge. It came at the edge because that is the only place anyone can be standing when it comes. Someone who stopped a month earlier never got the call, and so never tells the story. The people who say "just in time" are, almost by definition, the people who were still there.

There is something useful hidden in that. Most of us can hold on rather longer than we believe in the moment we are certain we cannot.

But the lesson is not simply to hang on and hope. Waiting for a rescue to turn up at the final moment is a passive way to live. It makes us the audience in our own story. The better lesson is that we get to choose. We can stop when stopping is right, without letting the months already spent argue us out of it. And we can go further when it matters, knowing it may still come to nothing.

When the call does come late, it deserves a proper celebration.

Until then, staying or leaving is a decision, not a vigil.