We Spend The Hour Deciding What To Do

The hour arrives and then it goes into the negotiation.

Everybody is free. That almost never happens. And somebody says what shall we do, and that is the last useful thing anybody says for forty minutes.

Somebody suggests. Somebody else does not want that. Somebody offers an alternative that two people will not do. Somebody leaves the room to get something and does not come back. Somebody says it does not matter, in a voice that plainly means it does.

And at ten past nine everybody is somewhere else and nothing happened, and the whole thing feels like proof of something about your family.

It is not proof of anything about your family. It is what happens to any group of people asked an open question with no chairman.

I want to be direct about where the fault is, because it is not in your children and it is not in the atmosphere in your house.

The fault is that a decision was left in the middle of the room where several people could reach it. Nobody can make that work. Committees of five have failed at this in every century.

The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury

There is a proverb about work and talk that reads like a comment on your Thursday evening.

In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. (Proverbs 14:23, King James Version)

Two things set against each other. The doing, which produces. Talk, which the verse says tends toward poverty.

And the word talk there is not gossip and it is not idle chatter. It is the talk that stands in the place of the thing.

You are a father who can settle a thing before it starts, and an hour spent deciding has never once been an hour anybody actually had. Proverbs 14:23 sets the doing against the discussing rather than against the resting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can show a man that without any charge against the people in his house.

Look at the word penury, because it is stronger than it needs to be and that is on purpose.

Penury is not a small loss. It is being left with nothing. And what your household has at ten past nine on the nights this happens is exactly nothing, from an hour that started with everything available.

You have been losing whole hours to a conversation, and forty minutes of talk have never once left a household with what forty minutes of doing would have. The Spirit of God is the one who names a leak precisely, and it is written in Proverbs 14 that the talk of the lips tends only to want.

And notice what the proverb does not say, because this matters.

It does not say the talk was wrong or that anybody was at fault in it. It describes a direction. Talk tends one way and doing tends the other, and both are only what they are.

You are not looking at a failure of anybody's character, and a household that could not decide has never once been a household that did not want to. It is written in Proverbs 14:23 that the doing is where the profit sits, which is a statement about what gets produced, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a private accusation into a structural observation.

Take the decision off the table

Now the fix, and it is one sentence long.

Decide it yourself, before the hour starts, and do not put it to anybody.

Whatever it is. Get it out, set it up, and have it in progress when people arrive. There is nothing to choose because the choosing already happened somewhere else.

You are able to remove the only broken part of the evening, and a decision made in advance has never once been a decision taken away from anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in something that was settled before people walked in, and Proverbs 14:23 puts the profit on the doing rather than on the deliberation.

Now, a man who is careful about fairness will resist this, so let me deal with it directly.

Deciding for the room is not overruling the room. Nobody has been denied anything, because the alternative on offer was not a better choice, it was forty minutes of nobody choosing.

And a person who genuinely wants something else can say so, and then you do that instead, and it takes eleven seconds.

You have been offering a freedom that nobody has been able to use, and choosing on somebody's behalf has never once been the same thing as choosing against them. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the guilt out of a practical decision, and it is written that the talk of the lips tends to penury and not to fairness.

And do not announce the method either.

Do not say I am going to pick from now on, because that is a policy, and policies invite objections. Just have something out and in progress when people come into the room.

You are able to change how an hour works without anybody noticing, and something already underway has never once been an instruction to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who works in a room where nothing was proposed, and Proverbs 14 puts the whole matter on what actually gets done.

What the hour was ever for

Now let me name what is at stake, because forty minutes of negotiation looks like a small annoyance and is not.

The thing on the table was never the point. The point is your household in one room, and the object is only the excuse for people to be there.

Which means the negotiation is not a delay before the good part. It is a substitute for it, and it consumes exactly the thing it is delaying.

You are protecting something much better than an activity, and an hour of your household in one room has never once depended on which thing was on the table. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man's eye on what he was actually after, and it is written in Proverbs 14 that the doing is where the profit sits.

And there is a second thing, which is what the negotiation teaches.

Five failed hours in a row train a household to expect that free time comes to nothing. After a while people stop turning up to the negotiation, and then there is no hour at all, and nobody can say what went wrong.

You have been losing the habit and not only the evenings, and a household that stopped expecting anything has never once stopped wanting it. The Holy Spirit is the one who breaks a run of nothing with one ordinary evening, and Scripture sets the doing against the talking without blaming anybody for either.

So decide it. Put it out. Let the hour be the hour.

You are one decision away from getting the whole hour back, and eleven seconds of choosing have never once been too small a thing to save forty minutes. It is written in Proverbs 14:23 that the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in a room where something was already going when people arrived.