Some things simply cannot wait

I’m back home now, still catching up on sleep and turning over the last ten days in my mind.

I went to the US to watch my home nation, Scotland, play in the FIFA World Cup. My son, who’s seventeen, came with me. So did a small group of friends I’ve known since we were twelve years old, when we were together at school – now a fireman, an air traffic controller, a property developer, a civil servant, and me. Five very different lives that somehow never drifted apart.

I won’t pretend the football gave us much to cheer. On the pitch, it was a disappointing tournament for Scotland. But that’s almost beside the point now. What I keep coming back to isn’t the score line – it’s everything around it.

There was a night in Boston, still hoarse from the match the day before, sitting in a pub near Fenway with my son and old friends, nobody in a rush to be anywhere else. 

There was an early morning walk along the Charles River, coffee in hand, the water on one side and the city waking up on the other. 

And then there was Miami Beach, where 20,000 Scots in kilts marched along the sand to the sound of bagpipes, sun blazing overhead. Miami has seen a lot of things. It had never seen that. 

Each individual experience, fun and enjoyable. Together, they’re the sort of thing you remember for the rest of your life.

Here’s the thing that struck me most, somewhere over the Atlantic on the way home. Scotland had gone 28 years without qualifying for a World Cup before this one. It could easily be another 28 before it happens again. My son won’t be seventeen again. My friends and I won’t always be free enough, fit enough, or daft enough to drop everything and fly across an ocean for a football match. This particular version of “us” — this exact group, at this exact moment in our lives — only existed once.

I could have found reasons not to go. There’s always a reason not to go. A full diary, a client meeting that felt urgent at the time, and the nagging sense that a business doesn’t run itself while you’re away. 

All of that was true, and none of it mattered in the end. The business was still there when I got back. The inbox was still there. What wouldn’t have been there ever again was that particular trip, with those particular people, at that particular age.

I think a lot of us spend a long time building towards a future point when there’ll finally be enough time, enough certainty, enough margin to do the things that matter most. But some things don’t wait politely for a quieter season of life. 

Children grow up on their own schedule, not yours. Friends move, get older, get busier, get less energetic. Health and energy don’t hold at today’s levels indefinitely. A window closes, often before you’ve noticed it’s closing.

None of this is a call to recklessness. It’s simply a reminder that timing matters – and that “later” isn’t guaranteed to look like “now.” 

If there’s something on your list this year that depends on a particular person, a particular stage of life, or a particular window that won’t reopen, that’s worth paying attention to. Not everything can wait for the perfect moment. Some things simply have to happen now, or not at all.

So my hope for you, reading this on a quiet weekend, is genuine: think of the one thing – a trip, a conversation, a gathering, an adventure – that only works right now, with the people and circumstances you have today. And then go and do it.

Your future self will thank you for it.

Until next time,

Alan Smith

CEO