On Knowing When

Passionflower and passionfruit by Étienne Denisse from Flore d’Amérique, 1846. (Available as a print, a cutting board, and stationery cards, benefitting The Nature Conservancy.) Via The Marginalian

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

-James Baldwin

Notions & Contemplations

They say timing is everything. I’ve certainly experienced this truth in the context of major life decisions, like starting and ending relationships or finding the next career move.

Recently I’ve been struck by the importance of timing when it comes to smaller, every day decisions. On knowing when to speak up. On knowing when to, ahem, shut up. On knowing when to double down, and on knowing when to take a step back.

Knowing When is a subconscious consideration that we must make a hundred (thousand?!) times a day; and yet I suspect it rarely takes the form of a conscious question. More often than not, we are caught in the tide of our emotions or our to-do list, pulled towards one action or another without considering the timing of a chosen behavior.

An example: I recently participated in a four-week seminar on the writings of James Baldwin, an author and activist on race and identity in America. The seminar, generously offered by Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, had about a dozen students–community members like myself–from truly diverse backgrounds. During the first session, I could hardly contain my excitement: I was back in the classroom (#nerdalert), reading the works of a personal hero and cultural giant, and I had a lot to say.

After class, I played the scene over and realized how little I’d heard from my classmates. I realized that, in an earnest expression of my enthusiasm, I’d taken up a lot of airtime–and in so doing, I’d taken it away from others. I decided to be more conscious of the timing of my contributions for the rest of the seminar, and sure enough, I learned a great deal from my classmates, who it turns out also had a lot to say.

Knowing when the time is right to engage or disengage is a function of emotional intelligence or EQ, and it becomes particularly important in diverse group settings in which the default power dynamic favors those of us who are accustomed to, ummm, talking a lot. As I get better at Knowing When, I know the first thing I have to do is pause long enough to form the conscious question: is this the right time for me to speak/contribute/act? To answer that question, I then have to check in on two fronts:

1. Self-Awareness: Am I in the right headspace to offer something valuable? And, critically, what is my motivation for contributing at this moment?

2. Social-Awareness: What’s the energy in the “room”? Have others had an opportunity to contribute fully?

Sometimes the answers to those questions lead me to speak; sometimes they remind me to listen. Either way, the consideration of Knowing When always, always improves my contribution, and I’d call that a When-Win. ;)

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In the spirit of my recent James Baldwin seminar, I offer recommendations from his extraordinary portfolio of contributions to our society:

“Letter to My Nephew,” first published in The Progressive in 1962. If you read nothing else by Baldwin (which would be a shame), please read this.

James Baldwin and William F Buckley debate the question “Has the American Dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?” at the Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, UK (1965)

“Sonny’s Blues,” a beautiful, fictional short story on suffering, transcendence, race, and love in America.