Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the criteria for qualification and disqualification of Levites:

“Levites remain fit for Temple service with the blemishes enumerated in the Torah but are unfit with the passage of years, as they are fit for service only between the ages of thirty and fifty (see Numbers 4:47).”

Beis Yisrael (Behaalosecha 5709) reads a deeper hint in this statement. Blemishes do not automatically invalidate but years do. People make mistakes in life, but they can be corrected; time, however, can never come back.

This is a heavy truth. There are times where a person spends years in guilt or indecision. He or she never makes the choice to go one way or the other out of fear of being wrong. While caution is valid, staying in the same place and not taking action might be worse, because we can try to take the right action, and even if wrong, we can try to correct it. However, time that is lost cannot be recovered. One of the hardest and momentous decisions in life is whom to marry, and sometimes tragically if one should divorce. These decisions are often fraught with anxiety and fear of making the wrong call. It’s all valid. Yet it’s also true that time keeps marching on, and so no decision and limbo may be appropriately cautious or an even greater loss.