The art of waiting

I just caught myself getting frustrated because my hob was taking a while to warm up.

I stood there staring into the pan with chopped vegetables watching the butter slowly splutter into life.

But then I realised there was no point getting annoyed over something that is supposed to take time.

I moved away from the hob.

The same applies to the rest of our lives.

Many things just need time.

Time is the missing ingredient.

There’s no use gritting teeth and worrying and pining over things that are out of our control.

And yet, we still hover by our pans.

We think and resist and wish we knew more.

We operate under a defunct assumption that being there for something will help it along or fix it.

But it won’t.

Maybe you had a frustrating day at work and were embarrassed by something a colleague said about you in a meeting.

But it happened. Dunzo. It’s in the past.

In truth, it’s no longer real.

Thinking about it will only inject fuel into the feeling of shame, as though reliving the moment. This does no one any good, particularly you.

So, as we stir in the needed ingredient—time—we feel the burn of the incident dissipate.

During that waiting period, you turned your attention to other things.

You weren’t ruminating. You were doing. You were being productive— a real productive, not the fake kind of grinding through thoughts, thinking you’ve done something, but really, you lost hours.

If life spits grease in your eye, ask yourself:

Can I fix this, or can I leave it to time?

. . .

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