Are You Waiting in Vain?

A reflection on career change, identity, and the courage to begin

Nietzsche wrote something that has stayed with me.

"…in nooks all over the earth sit men who are waiting, scarcely knowing in what way they are waiting, much less that they are waiting in vain. Occasionally the call that awakens them to start living…comes too late, when the best youth and strength for action has already been used up by sitting still; and many have found to their horror when they 'leaped up' that their limbs had gone to sleep and their spirit had become too heavy. 'It is too late,' they said to themselves, having lost their faith in themselves and henceforth forever useless." — Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

It's a brutal passage. And yet, every time I read it, I don't feel despair. I feel a kind of urgent tenderness — for the people I work with, and honestly, for all of us.

Because I recognise those nooks. I see them every day.

The waiting that doesn't look like waiting

Most of the people I work with aren't idle. They're busy — often exhaustingly so. They're meeting targets, managing teams, keeping things together. But underneath the busyness, there's a quiet waiting happening.

Waiting for the right moment to make the move they've been thinking about for years. Waiting until the kids are older. Until the mortgage is smaller. Until they feel more confident. Until someone gives them permission.

They're waiting to become the person they already sense they could be — but the distance between who they are now and who they might become feels too vast, and the risk of trying and failing feels too real.

This is the waiting Nietzsche is describing. Not laziness. Not indifference. A kind of suspended state — wanting deeply, but not yet moving.

"It is too late"

The most painful part of his observation isn't the waiting itself. It's what happens when people finally do try to move, only to find that something inside has grown heavy.

I hear versions of this often. "I should have done this ten years ago." "I've left it too long." "Who am I to start over now?"

There's a particular grief in believing you've missed your moment. It doesn't just create regret — it attacks identity. It whispers that you are the kind of person who doesn't follow through. That whatever fire you once had has gone out.

And when you lose faith in yourself, the cost isn't just one missed opportunity. It's the slow erosion of your willingness to try at all.

But here's what Nietzsche doesn't say

He doesn't say it is too late. He says people say it to themselves.

That distinction matters enormously.

The "too late" is rarely a fact. It is almost always a story — one that gains power the longer it goes unchallenged. The limbs haven't actually gone to sleep. The spirit hasn't actually become too heavy. What's happened is that the person has stopped believing they're capable of movement.

This is the thing I find most hopeful about this passage: the heaviness it describes is created by waiting, not by time. Which means it can be undone — not by some extraordinary leap, but by beginning. By one small, deliberate act of trust in yourself.

The career changer's particular burden

Career change carries a unique kind of identity weight. It's not just what you do that's shifting — it's who you are. Your professional identity is woven into how you introduce yourself at dinner parties, how you understand your own worth, how you explain yourself to your family.

To say "I want to do something different" is to say "the self I've been presenting to the world isn't the full story." That takes courage. And without support, it's easy to mistake the discomfort of that exposure for evidence that you're wrong to want something different at all.

You're not wrong. You're just in the part of the story that feels uncertain before it feels clarifying.

A different way to think about starting

I'd gently push back on the idea that what's needed is willpower, or readiness, or a dramatic decision. In my experience, those things rarely move people — not sustainably, anyway.

What tends to shift things is catching a glimpse of a better future. Not a fully formed plan. Not a guaranteed outcome. Just a moment where you can see, even dimly, who you might become and what your life might feel like if you stopped waiting and started moving. That glimpse creates something that pushing and pressure rarely can: a pull.

When you're drawn toward something rather than just trying to escape what's behind you, small steps become possible. The first conversation. The first time you say out loud what you actually want. The first move that isn't about fleeing — but about heading somewhere. These feel less like leaping into a void and more like walking toward something real.

A conversation with the right person can open the door to that glimpse. So can a book, a chance encounter, or simply giving yourself permission to sit with the question seriously. But whatever opens it — it's the vision that does the work. You don't need courage first. You need to be able to see something worth moving toward.

You haven't missed it

If you're reading this and recognising yourself in those nooks Nietzsche describes — I want to say this clearly: your limbs have not gone to sleep. Your spirit is not too heavy. The fact that you're still thinking about this, still feeling the pull of something different, is not a sign that it's too late. It's a sign that the call is still coming through.

The question is whether you're willing to answer it.

If this resonates, I'd love to hear what you're sitting with. And if you're at a point where the waiting has gone on long enough — reach out. That's exactly the kind of conversation I'm here for.

Justin Sheehan is an executive coach working with career changers, leaders, and people navigating meaning and direction in life.