Think of the days you have lost to defeat.
They are as dead as leaves on a plant. Snip them.
The roots are alive awaiting the water from your hand
that new growth will emerge………
for life must flow through you, not to you. (Jane Perry)
Life is --- waiting. From birth to the grave and everything in-between, it’s all about waiting. Mothers wait for 9 months before the baby can be born. They wait for the passing of the years for the baby to grow into an adult. We all go through the levels of school and at each point we wait with eagerness for the day of graduation. Then we go out to the world and apply for jobs. We sit at the reception and be one among many others waiting for the call to be interviewed. When we land jobs, we find ourselves waiting for contracts to be signed, clients to call, projects to materialize, and other nitty-gritty details at the workplace. At a restaurant, we wait to be served our orders. At the bus terminal, we wait for our bus to arrive. On a Monday, we wait for Friday to come. In the kitchen, we wait for water to boil for our coffee or the egg to cook. Farmers wait for the fields to grow. Fishermen wait for a big catch to their nets tossed over the waters. At the traffic intersection, we wait for the green light to drive safely on. At the hospital, we wait for the results of the medical tests to know about our illness or health. In college entrance exams, we wait for the release date of our scores. At the airport, we wait at the boarding lounge area for our scheduled plane. All these and more are familiar things that come to us in the course of our life. It’s just one waiting after another. It’s a lot harder when it involves huge concerns in our life – when a part or the whole of our future lies at stake.
It’s all about waiting for something or someone. What goes on inside of us while we wait? A lot covering the broad range of the (negative) emotional spectrum--- impatience, edginess, annoyance, anxiety, stress, fear, dread, trepidation, panic, doubt, uncertainty, anticipation, suspicion, worry, unease --- in short, frazzled nerves. Yup, you feel your insides knotted-up real tight. The good side of it is that it keeps you on your toes --- and the bad side, if you don’t get a good hold of it, is that you end up a nervous wreck. Naah! That’s not healthy for you and those around you. Your tension rubs off on them and hits them terribly and that’s the worse thing that could happen – having people messed up, too, just because you’re feeling that way.
Let’s try to understand what ‘waiting’ does for us. Nothing is ever ready-to-wear except clothes and instant gratification is found only in instant coffee and cola drinks. 'Instant' is almost always simply skin-deep -superficial. Life to be meaningful involves some amount of waiting. For how else can something grow and develop into its full potential unless it goes through a procedure or some process. You do know that to get from here to there is a space in-between called ‘journey’. This is where the best part of living happens –the journey towards a destination, a goal, an objective. The magic occurs here and not at the end. The gist of existence is when everything that matters comes into play to form something better if not the best, something good, satisfying, and fulfilling. You, in this journey, become privy to the magic of creation unfolding right before your eyes. At this point is where your whole being comes alive–- feeling, sensing, absorbing, learning and transforming. This is what ‘waiting’ brings out and is the reason for its being. This is where life happens when you hold it in your hands – it can become stale or it can breathe forth new life, new hopes, new dreams, new meaning. It all depends on you.
Big ‘waits’ or small ‘waits’, it can either be defeats or success whichever way you want it to become. Snip it off when it does nothing good to you. It could be akin to dead leaves on a branch. Otherwise, water it -- bring forth new life, growth, and new meaning. Life must flow through you, not to you. Further, God surely knows what He's doing when He makes us wait.
(I've written this for a friend who feels so tired and weary of 'waiting'. She wants things to get moving pronto and have results show itself now, not later or next week or next year or 'god knows when!' to quote her. Such impatience. lolz But then, I want to thank her for bringing me to this new insight and understanding. And I hope that when she reads this, she too will begin to understand that 'waiting' has its own reason for being in our life.)
posted on Monday, May 15, 2006 9:52 AM
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