Why leaving it makes sense

Nobody leaves a friend's message for a week because they've decided the friend can wait. They leave it because, at the moment it arrives, answering it is a small thing that needs more than they've got, and leaving it costs nothing visible. It's worth being honest about what the delay gives you, because a habit that gave you nothing wouldn't be a habit.

It gives you your attention back. The message arrived in a queue or a meeting or at the school gate, and answering it there would have meant doing two things badly. It promises a better reply later, one with the cake admired and October settled and a bit of your own news in return, which is what your friend deserves. It keeps the evening as it was. Nothing was on the list tonight, and a reply that does the friend justice would be a thing on the list. And it spares you a small awkwardness now, the awkwardness of a reply that's too short or too late or opens with sorry, by moving that awkwardness to a day when you'll handle it better.

Underneath those there's usually a set of beliefs, and they're the chapters that follow. That you'll reply properly later. That they know you're busy and will read the silence that way. That it's their turn anyway, or was, at some point. That it's been so long now that a reply would be strange. That a short reply would be worse than none. That the friendship will keep, and you'll pick up where you left off. That nobody meant anything by any of it. Each of those has something true in it, and each of them is doing the same job, which is making tonight's silence look free.

The delay is an answer to a real problem, which is that you have more people you care about than minutes you're prepared to give them at a bus stop. This book isn't going to tell you the problem isn't real. It's going to look at whether the proper reply is the only alternative to silence, because I don't think it is. Then it'll look at what the silence costs, from the other end, where it doesn't look like a busy week. And then it'll give you a way of answering a message that fits inside the queue, so that the friend gets something today and the proper reply can stop standing between you.