There Is No Right Moment

Most of us are waiting for something.

We are waiting until the business is more stable. Until the children are older. Until we are fitter, richer, less tired, better prepared. Until the weather turns, the market settles, the diary clears. We tell ourselves we are being patient. Very often we are just postponing.

I saw a short video recently of a sunset over a quiet beach. The caption said that we spend so much of our lives waiting for the right moment, forgetting that life is happening right now. It is not a new thought. But it landed, because I have spent a good part of my life learning it the hard way.

The myth of ready

The right moment is a comforting idea. It suggests that somewhere ahead, a day will come when the conditions line up, the doubts fall silent, and we finally feel prepared. All we have to do is wait for it.

I have never met that day.

When I started handcycling seriously, there was no ready-made path. There was no association in Singapore, no clubs to join, no list of routes. Together with Foo Fung Liang and a small group of people who cared, we helped build one. The Handcycling Association of Singapore was incorporated in 2009, and it later grew into the Para Cycling Federation of Singapore. Had we waited for the infrastructure to exist before we started, it would never have existed.

Change the equipment, not the dream

Adaptive sport teaches you something that applies far beyond sport. When the conditions are wrong, you do not have to wait for them to change. Sometimes you change the equipment instead.

A handcycle is exactly that. So is an adapted rowing seat, an adapted harness for paragliding, an adapted entry into the water for a dive. None of them makes the challenge disappear. They make it possible to begin.

I think most of life works this way. We say, "When things are right, I will start", but what we usually need isn't better circumstances. It is a different approach to the circumstances we already have.

Beijing to Mohe

In 2019 I rode from Beijing to Mohe, the northernmost town in China, a little over 2,600 kilometres. People sometimes assume a journey like that begins when everything is in place: the sponsors confirmed, the body in perfect condition, the route mapped to the last metre.

It does not. It begins when you decide you are going, then solve problems as they arrive.

The same was true when I rode from Lithuania to Oslo in 2023, and from Cambodia to Thailand later that year. Each ride had a hundred reasons to wait another season. Each one happened because, at some point, waiting stopped being an option I was willing to take.

What waiting costs

Waiting feels free. It is not.

Every year we postpone something that matters, we pay for it in a currency we cannot earn back. Not money. Time, energy, and the version of ourselves who would have been changed by doing the thing.

I'm not saying this to make anyone feel guilty. I say it because I have seen how quickly circumstances can change, for better and for worse. The body you have today, the people around you today, the opportunity in front of you today: none of these is guaranteed to be there when the moment finally feels right.

Start small, start now

If there is something you have been waiting to begin, I would gently suggest this. Do not wait to feel ready. Ask instead: what is the smallest step I could take this week?

Not the whole journey. One step. Send the email. Book the first lesson. Go for the short ride. Write the first page. Make the call you have been rehearsing in your head for a year.

In my experience, readiness does not come before action. It comes because of it.

The right moment is not somewhere ahead of you. It is this one, the one you are already standing in. It is imperfect, inconvenient and slightly frightening. It is also the only one you will ever actually get to use.

#ThereIsNoRightMoment #StartBeforeYouAreReady #Resilience #AdaptiveSport #Handcycling #PersonalGrowth #AjmalSamuel