Do You Have To Take It Home?

Just because a watermelon calls you, you don’t have to take it home.

This is a crucial piece of information to know.

And of course, I’m not talking just about watermelons.

Come with me. I promise it will make sense.

As long as I have been buying watermelons, I’ve bought them in a particular way. And I’ve been buying them for a very long time.

I’ve been shopping for my family since I was nineteen, and since watermelons are a summer addiction for me, that’s a lot of melons over the decades.

For many of those years, here’s how I bought them.

I’d walk over to the watermelon bin and pick up the watermelon that “called me.” You know what I mean. You listen. Things call.

I shop for other things this way as well. I pause outside of stores and sense if anything inside is calling me.

It’s even more challenging doing this online—though I’ve learned that listening can happen through a screen too—but still, this is the way I have shopped for watermelons most of my life, and this story is about melons after all.

Or is it?

Because let’s pretend for a moment that every decision is a watermelon.

After all these years of buying watermelons, I noticed something that changed everything.

Not every watermelon that calls to me is the one I should get.

Yes. Just because something calls us doesn’t mean it is a call we should answer.

Because even though most of the time, the watermelon that calls me has been a pretty good watermelon, it isn’t always.

Sometimes it’s terrible.

And in a world where we’re bombarded with more calls than ever—notifications, opportunities, well-meaning advice, shiny new possibilities—this distinction matters more than it used to.

So I started doing something different.

Now, I walk over to the bin, listen for the call, and then I start knocking on the watermelons that are calling me.

If you buy watermelons, you know what I am doing. I am listening for a sound. Hollow. Deep. Right. If it sounds good on one side, I turn it over and knock again.

Not until all the sides sound correct do I pick up the watermelon.

Yes, I had always knocked on watermelons before. But not carefully.

I had considered the call more important than the knock.

Are you following me here? I know you are.

Because ideas call us, opportunities call us. People call us.

But should we take them home?

Perhaps we give the idea a quick perusal to see if it sounds right, but we assign the call itself more power.

So we say “yes” when really, we should do a bit more knocking.

The Art of Knocking

Do you have a decision to make?

Look the decision over as carefully as a watermelon. Does it feel right to you, personally? Not anyone else. You.

Do you want to spend time on this thing? Time is more important than money. Is this thing calling you worth the time?

Does it fit into your core values? Will the doing of it make you uneasy?

Will you have to rationalize your choice? (As in, “If it called me, it must be right.”)

If it frightens you—or stretches you—that’s not necessarily bad. It can be a very good thing if it’s what you truly want.

If it doesn’t make you need to learn something new, doesn’t take you out of what you thought possible, it probably isn’t worth doing at all.

So, how is my practice of thoroughly knocking on watermelons working out for me?

I still listen to the call. That matters.

But now it has to survive a thorough knocking, or else I move on.

My success rate for producing good, sometimes excellent, watermelons has risen to nearly 100% accuracy.

One Thing At A Time

By the way, I can’t leave this idea of making a decision alone before saying one more thing.

Making a decision does not involve the how-to-do-it part.

Leave that to later. Don’t muddy the waters.

Make the decision first, then decide how to do it.

Don’t buy watermelons, onions, oranges, and apples at the same time. Get one. Then get the next.

It’s the same thing here. Pick the watermelon. Now ask yourself, how do I get it home?

That’s a decision too—one at a time.

But be sure you knock first. You’ll be happy that you did.

What’s calling you today? And more importantly, have you knocked on it yet?