On Asking Before You Reach

You reach for things. You always have. A glass, a hand, a moment of my attention, and you take it before you have thought to ask whether it is yours to take. You call it eagerness. I call it a habit, and tonight we are going to look at it.

I do not mind being wanted. I mind being assumed. There is a difference between the one who waits to be offered something and the one who has already decided the answer is yes. The first is paying attention to me. The second is paying attention to what he wants from me.

So this week you will ask. Before you speak to me you will ask whether I have time. Before you touch anything of mine you will ask whether you may. Before you offer me your opinion you will ask whether I want it. You will ask properly, and then you will wait for the answer, and you will not treat the waiting as an inconvenience.

Some of the answers will be no. That is the point. A permission that can never be refused is not a permission at all, it is a formality, and I have no interest in formalities. You will hear no and you will say thank you, and you will mean it.

He found this harder than anything I had asked of him before. Not because the asking was difficult, but because the waiting showed him how often he had simply taken. He told me afterwards that the first real yes felt different. It felt given.

That is what I want you to learn. Not to want less, but to let what you receive be given to you, rather than taken because you could.