Lady 1: “Sorry Miss, are you also queuing ?”
Lady 2: “I am indeed”
Lady 1: “Have you been there for long?”
Lady 2: “For quite a while, as a matter of fact. You need to have patience until it gets to be your turn.”
Lady 1: “Right. Although I hope I won’t have to wait for too long, as I’ve lots to accomplish.”
Not so long after, the speaker announces “Next!”
Lady 1: “Miss, it’s finally your turn! Aren’t you going?”
Lady 2, hesitating: “I’m not sure…I….maybe… well, you should take my turn: you seem in a hurry and clearly you know what you want…”
Lady 1: “Thanks but…I don’t understand. You said you’ve been here for long. Aren’t you decided yet?”
Lady 2, sighing: “Not quite”.
Lady 1: “If I may say: you won’t get the missing part of your answer just by standing here, waiting and letting others taking over your turn. Sometimes, you just have to try. And if it doesn’t bring you the result you expected, well, then, at least you’ll know that you need to change line!”
Lady 2: “You are right. But where do I find the courage?”
Lady 1: “You don’t find it. You experience it by daring. Now, why don’t you give yourself a chance today?”
Some wait in the line to post mail, to buy food, to check-in for a flight, to use public toilets, to get in a concert, to have a medical treatment, to make an audition, to enter a nightclub, to register to new university classes, to get a job,… I’m lining to figure out what turn to give to my life.
I’m still at that same place where I was some years ago and I haven’t progressed. That must be because I used to give myself the excuse that I would have time to figure things out or, differently put, I convinced myself that things would happen on their own, at the right moment. I couldn’t be more wrong. Time passes by and doesn’t wait for you at all. “No guts, no glory” as would remind me a friend of mine. “It’s not because you look physically 10 years younger that you have a credit of 10 years. You still age!” as my Neighbor would bluntly – but rightly – say.
What am I doing….or should I say, NOT doing?
1 Comment
May 2, 2009 at 11:36 pm
. . . . and others rush forward, making mistakes that yield little or no satisfaction, just like your description of never having taken action at all. While on the one hand their flawed decisions allow them to live a life, their mistakes can be really devastating.
There is no right way for most of us; even those people who appear to “land on their feet” for years at a time don’t have it all. How do they test themselves if nothing ever goes wrong; how do they know what calibre of person they are? Unless you have looked into the abyss – emotional, financial or otherwise – and kept churning forwards, how can you know yourself? Until someone has treated you dreadfully and you have managed to turn the other cheek – perhaps for years – how can you know your depth of character. How do those who have always met success know what other paths they may have missed?
If God didn’t think you could carry these burdens, he would not send them your way. Perhaps it is his way of helping you realize what a good person you are?