The day the leap happened

A woman in Beirut teaches guitar from a small room in her flat, and these days there is a waiting list.

People who hear about her now assume something dramatic happened at some point. A recommendation from the right person, one concert, one evening when everything changed. That is how we picture progress: a hero clearing a gap in a single bound.

It did not happen that way. For her first year, her students were two nephews and a neighbour's son who mostly came for the biscuits. Nothing leapt.

What did happen was quieter. At some point she decided she was a guitar teacher. Not someone who might teach one day, if things worked out. Then the next morning, with an empty diary, she decided it again. And again the morning after.

That is the leap, and it happens on the inside. The outside only catches up much later, and from a distance looks like a jump.

Most of us are waiting for the outside version. The offer, the break, the moment that carries us over. Meanwhile the inside decision, which is entirely ours, sits unmade.

Today is the twenty-ninth of February, a date that only turns up once every few years. It is as good an excuse as any to make that choice. Not to arrive somewhere at once, but to commit to the road.

People who make this choice and keep it tend to do two small things. They put it on paper, in plain words: what they would be doing, and who it would help. That is harder than it sounds. And they tell one other person, because a decision someone else has heard is harder to quietly take back.