Fresh Ideas by Ursula Carlson: When is the time ever right?

How many times have I heard someone say, "The time is just not right for _______?" What does that really mean? More often than not, it's never the right time for something, because life is not made to order.

People are born at the "wrong" time; they die at the "wrong" time; marriages flounder at the "wrong" time; people lose jobs at the "wrong" time.

Going forth with the city Knowledge & Discovery Center Project is not really a question of "time" but of "merit." In fact, if anything, the timing of Mae Adams' gift is fortuitous for Carson City.

Those who have been paralyzed by the "time is not right" issue are not big-picture thinkers. At least that's what I conclude after reading an article in The New York Times Magazine about Jeremy Grantham, the founder and chief strategist of the asset-management firm GMO. Grantham's quarterly letters (read by others as well as those in the financial industry) manage to "inspire even the most short-term profit-minded investors to do a little fate-of-the-world-scale thinking."

In other words, most investors, like most of us, think automatically of our own short-term interests. But, according to Grantham, if we act only in our own self-interest, instead of considering the big picture, we only deepen the harm to all. So ... when we overfish the oceans for blue fin tuna because it sells for a thousands of dollars per pound right now, we're harming ourselves in the long run.

The same holds true for those of us who balk at the $5-per-person ($26 per family of four) tax per year simply because it's a tax and therefore say "it's not the right time" for this project. We are forgetting what that $5-per-person tax will actually give us in terms of the big picture - in terms of the long run.

If we consider that we in Nevada do not even pay state income taxes, begrudging that $5 for the long-run benefit of all in Carson City seems shortsighted, if not a bit miserly.

This City Center Project is not a duplicate of any school or library in town or in the state. Nor is it another building destined to be abandoned because the town suddenly is being developed in a new geographic direction. This is an intentional community project. It needs to be at the center of town. Like the center of a wheel, it will be the hub around which working, living, learning and civic engagement are reinvigorated and enriched. It will be obvious to any newcomer: This is a capital city that understands the importance of moving ahead, of seeing the big picture, the greater good.

My son Sev's grandfather Carlson was a first-generation American. He won a scholarship to the University of Missouri to study engineering, but during the Great Depression his "old country" father kept him on the farm "to save" it. The farm was lost - and, even worse, so was Grandfather Carlson's opportunity. If only the good Swede father had been able to see the big picture, everyone in the family would have benefited in the long run.

• Ursula Carlson, Ph.D., is professor emerita at Western Nevada College and has lived in Carson City since 1974.