Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

"...headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place... for people just waiting." ~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Prolonging the Inevitable

Every weekday when I was a kid, Doreen (aka Mom) left a list of chores for my brother and me to finish after school, before she and Mic (aka Dad) got home from work. It was not a short list. Clean the bathrooms. Vacuum the entire house. Rake the leaves and gather up the nuts that had fallen from the massive Horse Chestnut tree in our yard.

My brother and I would glance at the list, set it down, and turn on the TV. There was Brakeman Bill to watch, and Batman, and Gilligan's Island, and The Monkees. How could anyone reasonably be expected to walk away from all that to scrub a bathtub?

So the list waited. Then, sometime in the last stretch of the afternoon, we would jump up and cram it all in, done well or not, just enough to make it look as if we had been working the whole time. And then came the part that took real skill. We would switch off the TV and cross our fingers that it had cooled down, because the minute Mic walked in, his hand went to the top of the set. He was well seasoned in the area of heat detection, and he had a knack for drawing out guilty parties.

It took me years to notice how much effort went into that routine. The cramming, the waiting for the TV to cool, the innocent faces at the dinner table. We worked harder at hiding the delay than the chores would ever have asked of us.

I would love to tell you I outgrew it. I still catch myself glancing at something heavy and unpleasant and setting it aside for later. But the thing I put off that cost me the most was my marriage.

I knew it needed to end. I knew it the way I had always known that list was sitting on the counter, even with my back turned to it. And still I kept thinking I could change. I could manage through. If I tried a little harder, or waited a little longer, maybe it would sort itself out. I simply didn't want to believe what I knew to be true, and I didn't want to face the consequences of making the choice.

Looking back, I can see what the waiting was doing for me. As long as I didn't decide, I didn't have to face what came next. My life could stay exactly as it was a little while longer, even though I knew it wasn't working. At the time, I would have called that patience. It was closer to protection.

I see this in the people I work with, and I understand it from the inside. The divorce papers filled out halfway and tucked into a folder for months. The conversation about the marriage, or the job, or the move, saved for after the holidays, then after the graduation, then for whenever things settle down. Things rarely settle down enough. We tell ourselves we are waiting for a better time, and meanwhile, we spend a surprising amount of energy keeping the TV cool, making sure it all looks handled.

What I didn't understand as a kid, standing in the yard with a rake an hour before dinner, is that leaves are light on the day they fall. Leave them for a week, through a few good Seattle rains, and they turn heavy and matted and glued to the grass. The chestnuts sink into the mud. Everything we put off works like that. It stays right where we left it, and it gets heavier while it waits.

I think about that hand resting on the television more than I ever expected to. It never took Mic long to figure out what we'd been up to. The warm TV gave us away every time. Most of what we put off is like that. We already know what's on the list. What's left to decide is how many more afternoons we spend with the cartoons on.

Love and Light,

Copyright © 2026 Michele Heffron Life Strategist, All rights reserved.

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