I seem to be learning lessons about life rapid-fire lately. Even as I grow older, “learning my lesson” keeps on coming, maybe even more so than earlier in my life. So, kids of all ages shouldn’t feel called out when they have to “learn their lesson” over and over again.
Something I learned while playing matching games on my phone, usually when most people are sleeping, was not fresh knowledge but more of a refresher course. The nugget that I received as a eureka moment was this, “there is an optimal time for everything.”
I know this fact but it came as brand-new knowledge when I found myself awakened after several dreams in the wee hours of the night, and decided to play a game on my phone. When I opened the game app I remembered that I had closed it in frustration last time I played. You see, I had nearly completed the game when I inadvertently tapped the home button and the game progress I made was wiped out only to start over. I closed the app in exasperation.
When I opened the game this time, I played it lickety-split without any ads butting in, and as it was a typically long game with lots of points, I finished it in record time. I said to myself by way of a reminder, “there’s a right time for everything.”
I’ve learned this same lesson hundreds of times, why don’t I remember it? For example, why don’t I just simplify and erase some needless frustration by stopping an endeavor when exasperation first sets in, saving it for another time. But no, I usually let the tension build way too much before abandoning it for that better moment in time.
Only until the better time presents itself and the task goes smoothly, or as it should, do I see the difference. Some people have to learn lessons by seeing it or doing it for themselves. They learn by doing, not by hearing. Is that you too or is it just me?
Some of us call it trial and error. We can’t see the end result abstractly; we have to actually do the task and see that it was the wrong choice (or the right choice) before we get it.
In the same vein, we can’t see in the moment, that if we had just WAITED, we wouldn’t have needed to worry or stress because it worked out better than we imagined. That’s the downside of imagination, seeing a negative outcome when a positive one was on the way. That’s an example of “hurry up and wait,” usually borne out in a hospital or doctor’s waiting room.
Many years ago, I had a dream that I got the job, in the waiting room. Specifically, a bunch of us were waiting to be interviewed for a job. It was an inordinately long wait.
There was a closet in the waiting room. People who already worked there came out periodically and retrieved outdated office equipment like manual typewriters, shorthand pads, and Dictaphones, from the closet.
Some of the younger folks in the waiting room exited the building when they saw the old, unfamiliar stuff being unearthed. Others of us just waited.
Morning dwindled into midday. I took a train home to refresh myself and came back in the afternoon and just a few of the interviewees remained. A child began to act out and it was too annoying for a couple of people who then left.
It was the end of the day and the interviewer came out and asked one question of the three of us who remained. I got the job.
It seems that there truly is a time for everything. Sometimes you just have to wait for it. And if it’s not the time and you try to force it, you end up banging your head against the wall in frustration. It won’t happen until the time is right.
Have you ever observed that some people have good timing and others just don’t get it. Not until they blurt something out at the wrong time, do these folks realize they should have waited. It would have made all the difference.
The origins for “a time and a place for everything,” comes from the Bible’s Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. “For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven,” is how I remember it.
Ecclesiastes, along with Proverbs and others, is considered wisdom literature. In particular, Ecclesiastes ruminates about the meaninglessness of life without God.
Therefore, this quote about time and place, put into the context of meaninglessness, explains the frustration we experience when we get the timing wrong. “If I had just waited… maybe I wouldn’t have had to suffer….” The wisdom and simplicity of sometimes just waiting, is highlighted in this Scripture.
In popular psychological parlance, we’ve been told to chill out and (pause), wait for it…. If you’ve been hanging out in the waiting room for a while, I’m your sister.
Try making the best of the wait. “Whistle while we work,” is a little chorus I remember from lessons learned in childhood, originally from the 1937 Disney film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and it reminds us to go to work as usual, putting one foot in front of the other, while we wait for that other thing that we’re so tempted to force into being.
The time will be right sometime. So, dreams, jobs, waiting rooms, needless frustration, worrying for nothing… just wait for it. Or not. Maybe you’d rather learn your lesson again the next time around, like me.