Watch out! The Discourager of Hesitancy is behind you

Thanks to Edward, a regular Church of the Churchless commenter, I learned about the Discourager of Hesitancy today. He’s a fearsome dude. I can feel him standing behind me right now, razor sharp weapon at the ready.

He doesn’t like excessive deliberation. I feel the pressure to type what I want to say without undue cogitation. I’ve gotten more than a little attached to having my head and body, well, attached.

“The Discourager of Hesitancy” is a short story by Frank Stockton, he of “The Lady and the Tiger” fame. If you went to high school in the United States, you’ve probably read the latter fable. I’m sure that I was under its unconscious influence when I wrote about choosing between reality and belief in my Two Doors post (under which Edward shared his comment).

Bartleby informs me that “he who hesitates is lost” means that a person who spends too much time deliberating about what to do loses the chance to act altogether. Right on. That’s why we need the Discourager of Hesitancy.

He reminds us that rewards go to those who choose, even though the choosing be uncertain, fraught with danger, under duress. Not to choose is to choose, especially when the Discourager of Hesitancy is by your side. As he is. Right now. And at every moment.

Last night I wrote about Tango on my other weblog. Men lead, women follow. Yet what they both have to do is decide decisively. In a lesson we were told, “The man has to lead a move with bold confidence; the woman has to follow that lead with equal lack of hesitation—what she intuitively feels, she should do.”

I’m a Libra. Who doesn’t believe in astrology. Regardless, I’m well acquainted with weighing two sides of an argument. I’m fully familiar with balancing the options before me. Nothing wrong with this.

But if you read “The Discourager of Hesitancy” (where you’ll find a few typos in this source of the story) the downside of deliberation will become evident. I’m thankful that now I have another goad to keep me on the Just Do It road.

By and large I’m more regretful of the times in my life when I didn’t seize the moment than when I did, and wished I could let go.

Whether churchless or churched, atheist or believer, at every instant each of us is being called to decide. Answer the phone. Now. Say what’s on your mind. Do what you feel like doing.

Then hang up. And answer the next call. Immediately. For sure, before the Discourager of Hesitancy yells, “Too late!”

Comments

[Edward]

Excellent choice. There is a wonderful reading of these two stories by Toyah Wilcox set to music by Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists. It is moody and quirky and great for a night ride home.

These are game theory tales for children. And they respond to the intuition available to us. As a goad to action, death is rather straight forward, maybe even a little grandiose, but the tales are very bare in their insruction.

We have a tendency for reducing our choices to either/or. The Stockton tales emphasize what I would call the amplification of the simple: A choice between two paths becomes paralyzing, in a different way than the choice among options is complex. Having two options is disempowering, like have none at all. Having many options is empowering: we are potentially capable of many things.

In the king's realm, where we have agreed to a set of objective rules, we are compelled to play to the end. In game theory, action collapses the probability wave, and the challenge renews, now with more information.

The classic "Twin Slit" experiment in wave theory demonstrates that in nature, observation and action can be so divorced from each other and from pre-existing theory as to seem absurd. Is there a world where neither the Lady nor the Tyger is chosen? Are there other doors among those labelled "reality" and "belief" which our notions won't permit us to see?

This I think is what Stockton intuited: the set of answers in a given equation are self-limited by the equation, but the set of answers among a set of equations bear a geometric relationship to those equations.

So, the king has a Discourager of Hesitancy, (and we each a collection of voices,) or we would sit a meditate on the unfurling jazz of the future.