Waiting

Waiting is a part of life. It just is. We all have to face it at some time or another. Each person has had to wait some portion of his or her life. It is just a part of life. That's all there is to it. There is no sense in trying to avoid waiting. There is no sense in getting angry at waiting. Waiting is just a part of life, as is breathing, sleeping, and blinking. Sometimes, you just have to wait.

In spite of the rapid advances in technology, the drastic increase in speed of service in this 21st century, we humans who interact with one another are still made to wait at inconvenient times. We have to wait at stoplights. We have to wait on the phone. We have to wait at the counter or the check-out line. We have to wait for our Apple products to load. We have to wait for people to get back to us. We have to wait for people to get ready. We have to wait on people at restaurants. And we have to wait to be waited on.

The point is that is does nobody any good to get frustrated or angry at the waiting. Sometimes, we are just made to wait. It is especially difficult to comprehend why sometimes we speed up and get going to fast only to slow down and stop sooner in order to wait again. Sometimes, we think we are about to cease having to wait, and we get all excited, but then we are made to wait again. There are even times when we are made to wait in a designated waiting area, which makes the waiting all the more humiliating.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't have to wait? Wouldn't it be grand if everything just flowed together nicely and evenly? Wouldn't it be stupendous if we could eliminate waiting from each of our lives altogether?

We'd like to. Technology manufacturers would like to think we can, but we can't.

Waiting is just a part of life. It's there. It's a part of life just like babies being born, countries getting invaded, and prices going up. It's part of life just like lollipops, winning the lottery, and starring in a high school play.

We sometimes forget, though, that while we are made to wait for others on occasion, those are also made to wait for us on occasion. So, unless there is reason to be angry aside from one's own impatience, one unfortunately does not have a real right to be upset or frustrated at the time one lost by having to wait.

Waiting is a part of life. And so...we wait.

The Journey

In life, every person has goals and plans and intentions to carry out on his or her own. Every person has a place where he or she is going to end up. And every person carries on their own journey throughout their life to get to that place.

That place may be different than what the person originally intended. It may be right on course with what the person's plans were. Either way, it is a place that a person gets to after a long and arduous journey.

And while each person makes plans and follows some of those through and accomplishes other things he or she had intended to accomplish, each person also goes through other things that he or she had no intention going through. Each person picks up these other life experiences that he or she could never have planned.

These pleasant surprises that occur throughout one's life, these odds and ends that the journeyman had no intention of finding otherwise are what make that journey so interesting. A person could go through life exactly as he or she had intended and accomplished great things, but what good would that person's life had been if not for all the other interesting little happenings that occurred along the way.

Those moments out of your day when you say to yourself, "I'm glad I did that." Those are the little things that I'm talking about. It could be reconnecting with old friends at a random meeting place, or discovering the intricacies of a person you never thought were there, or seeing a photograph or piece of art you never knew existed.

Those are the things in life that make you who you are. Everybody has favorite movies. Everybody has favorite songs, or books, or TV shows. Not everybody has the same experiences, though, and that's what we need to share more of. It is those little things that make the journey so interesting, and it is those things that make the journey worth continuing.