Relative Something

Some things wait and some things don’t. I was contemplating writing about the subject of patience. You know the saying, “Wait for it, wait for iiiit”? It’s all about not jumping the gun. Not being so over-eager as to miss the better opportunity that presents itself in the next moment.

Don’t ask me about that question of how you know there is a better opportunity coming in the next moment. I have no idea. That is the mystery. That is why, when it happens… when you do wait and are rewarded with the prime opportunity, it is so magical.

The place I see this manifest most often is in the sports of indoor soccer and floorball that I play. If you rush your decision, the number of times you succeed in your objective is less than when you have the patience to delay your action. I watched this happen several times yesterday as players in front of me held the ball long enough for the defensive position to get impatient and shift, opening up a new opportunity to score which the shooters then took full advantage of. It was a beautiful. It’s the magic of the game!

However, on my way home from work, my focus on the art of waiting became distracted by Mother Nature. There is no waiting going on out there right now. Tree branches are filling with buds of new leaf growth. Dandelions are blossoming en masse. Shrubs are going gonzo with new growth, and any plan I had of doing some preliminary pruning to improve their shapes before the new growth happened is now well past the prime opportunity moment.

Another classic lesson on the duality of things in this life. Things aren’t so much either/or as they are both/and. Things wait, and things don’t.