Don’t Wait

After my mother succumbed to cancer in 2015, my father sat my two older sisters and myself down at the kitchen table, as he once used to do when we were all still living together as a family, to pass on some things my mother had wanted him to say to us.  Essentially it was about making the most of your time, not unexpected coming from someone facing down a terminal illness – her refrain over the course of that year was “One day – one hour – one minute” because you can really only face such a huge challenge one small step at a time. 

He told us several things that day, but what stood out most for me was the single, and utterly simple, exhortation: “Don’t wait.”  As someone in their late 40s who had just lost a mother, this really struck home for me.  So many things in my life I put off, or let slide, always telling myself there’d be time to come back to it later, but here I was, undeniably in mid-life, being forced to realize that time was limited and you can never tell just how much will be left to you.  But I didn’t write this song yet; the lesson didn’t really crystallize until my dad also, unexpectedly, passed away just a year later. 

Then it was clear, there really is no time to waste, waiting for just the right circumstances to do anything in your life is never going to get it done.  I’m a world-class procrastinator, and for all my big dreams and plans, musical and otherwise, I was suddenly face to face with turning fifty without really realizing much of those ambitions.  Looking back wouldn’t help; building castles in the air (my lifelong escape pattern) amounted to nothing: Now is the only time you have.  That’s how I came to quit my career job to focus all my energies on creating a band to put out all my own music, after years of playing in bands largely driven by other people’s vision.  This song – those two little words uttered so vehemently by my father in the last year of his own life – really started it all.  Whatever you’re waiting for, just do it.

                                           Don’t wait

                     Don’t wait, don’t wait
                Whatever you’re waiting for
                     Don’t wait, don’t wait
                Waiting takes way too long
                     Don’t wait, don’t wait
                What are you waiting for?
                    Don’t wait, don’t wait
                Waiting won’t get you far

Why put it off another day?
The only way to stop procrastinating:
You’ve got to do the things you say
Leave tomorrow, come back to today

                        Don’t wait…                                        Chorus

Now is the only time that counts
More than all your future plans amount to
Why stand for any more delay?
Lead tomorrow right back to today

                        Don’t wait…                                        Chorus

                                                          SuperChorus

There’s never a better time       
better than right now, darlin’
There’s never a better time 
better than right now, right now [x2]

                        Don’t wait…                                        Chorus
                                                          SuperChorus

© 2022 Scott Perry (SOCAN/BMI)
Recorded by Matt Di Pomponio at Echoplant
    and Adrian Buckley at Chez Miaou
Mixed & Mastered by Adrian Buckley
Scott Perry: Vocals, Guitars
Eric Lefebvre: Bass
Derek Macdonald: Keyboards
Adrian Buckley: Drums