The adjective unpostponable is used to refer to that which cannot be postponed ( defer , delay). What cannot be postponed, therefore, must be done in a timely manner.
For example: “The beginning of a sincere dialogue between the government and the opposition cannot be postponed” , “Tomorrow I have an appointment that cannot be postponed: my daughter will take her first communion” , “The construction of a hospital in this area cannot be postponed, the neighbors cannot “They can travel more than 100 kilometers to receive medical care.”
If something that cannot be postponed ends up being postponed, some type of problem or inconvenience occurs. Suppose a man is shot in the chest in the context of a robbery and begins to lose a lot of blood. That this individual receives medical attention cannot be postponed : if a professional does not treat him urgently, he could die.
Let's take the case of a country that registers a high level of inflation . Month by month, the prices of products and services rise, making it difficult for people to satisfy their material needs. Given this reality, analysts maintain that the measures that the government must take to contain inflation cannot be postponed , since otherwise a serious economic and social crisis could occur.
Determining what cannot be postponed and what things can be postponed is often difficult. Those who tend to delay issues that, in reality, must be attended to, engage in a practice known as procrastination . It is a frequent habit that occurs when a subject does not do what cannot be postponed and, instead, engages in activities that are less relevant but that cause more pleasure or well-being.
Although we cannot know with absolute precision the daily lives of our remote ancestors, such as those who lived several centuries before us, we have enough evidence to imagine that they had fewer opportunities to be distracted from their obligations, whether work or study. In the absence of the Internet, with its unpredictable and inexhaustible leisure options, it is likely that people would not waste their time on activities that did not interest them: let's not forget that it is possible to get carried away by photo galleries or funny videos to the point of losing a entire afternoon without knowing what we have done .
All this leads us to the recipe for postponing the unpostponable . What must happen for us to stop doing something of utmost importance? First of all, we must think about the point of view: it is possible to ignore an obligation that matters to us, or one that is of interest to a third party. In the first case, there is the possibility that our memory will betray us or that a defense mechanism will act on us that helps us get away from an activity that we do not dare to abandon. When the obligation benefits others, if we do not fulfill it on time it may happen that we do it conscientiously or that our brain plays tricks on us .
The case of the word unpostponable is particular in that it does not have well-defined antonyms: how to name those obligations that we can fail to fulfill, or those commitments that we can break without problems? An antonym could be absurd, since it would nullify the very nature of what cannot be postponed. With respect to its synonyms, on the other hand, we can cite the following three: urgent, inevitable and inescapable .
If we look at the synonyms just mentioned, they respond precisely to the ideas presented in the previous paragraphs. For example, a man who is shot in the chest needs urgent assistance , inescapably and inevitably . These three nuances are present in other cases, such as inflation and the construction of a hospital near a city.