Do you put ‘things’ on the back burner – to be dealt with later? Does later ever come? Somehow, these ‘things’ tend to reappear later at an most inconvenient time – they rarely just go away. Part of the reason they don’t just disappear is that they really are important – concepts, ideas, thoughts that you truly do need to know what and why you believe and act as you do.
The ‘harder’ aspects of who you are really can’t be on the back burner because there is a great tendency to get burned when you do or blindsided – which is just as bad. The harder aspects really are those foundational concepts, ideas that define who you are and how you go about being and doing you. When you don’t address the foundation to the foundation, you really are like the scripture that talks about shifting sand (Matthew 7:24-27). The foundation to your ‘house’ (the who, what, why of you) can cause you to fall when it is on shifting sand. Never assume the stability of your foundation when you don’t continue to grow.
When you consider it seriously… what is it you are putting on the back burner? Do you hope it will just disappear? Or perhaps you think it will be resolved in time – is this your ‘why’ of waiting? Another question is do you ever return to those things that are on the back burner? Or do you consider them insignificant so you can always put them off? And there can be a host of other reasons, questions as to the why of this kind of behavior. But I have sadly discovered that pebbles can grow into boulders.
This behavior is probably very familiar to most of us since most of us tend to do those things that are demanding (at least our perception of demanding) our immediate attention and justify this as to why we do what we do. Sometimes this is true… but sometimes it isn’t. The point in all this is not to delay returning to those back burner issues. If they are emerging then there is a reason and this is where we need to start – what is causing these ‘things’ to emerge now. It can be a warning which we need to heed. Perhaps not always this dramatic but back burner-ing should be a temporary approach… not a permanent solution.
