Time and Patience

Everyone has heard, used, written and likely ignored the tired adage of Everything Happens for a Reason. I'm guilty of this a well, we all are. But I must say I'm beginning to understand it more and more everyday. The outcomes of certain situations in our lives are not always to our liking or to our expectations. Sometimes they can amount to a climactic ending so cataclysmic that they either tear us down completely in one fell swoop or they break us down so that we can we can be reborn, reimagined, reinvigorated.

For me, 42 years was enough time (too long if you ask some) to have spent chasing after things, someones, ideas, hopes that I'd conditioned myself to rely on as what would complete me, what would make me happy. We create, sometimes to no fault of our own, the paths we traverse with a fiery fervor and an undying will to reach what we have convinced ourselves is the goal we've wanted all along. This can happen in business, friendships, schooling and most always love. We devise a plan filled with checklists and timelines that are meant to guide us to our dreams. But we fail to recognize that these dreams may not even be our own. Perhaps these dreams of idyllic love are just that...dreams. Ones from which we wake up startled by harsh realities, exhausted from the emotional ride itself only to encounter that it may have been more of a self induced nightmare. But it is these exact journeys that will sometimes lead us to exactly where we are meant to be, not in a dream at all, but in a real life happiness. What if what we thought we wanted along had nothing to do with what we needed all this time.

I'm a self admitted (to be read self ashamed) die hard romantic. I refuse to believe that I cannot be happy. I refuse to let any past detours lead me astray. They've all led me exactly to this specific spot. And I rather like it here on this spot. It's warm, it's comfortable, it's safe and that is all very new to me, but I welcome it with open arms, starry eyes and eager excitement. What I once believed to be a languid heart strained from the past I see now as an unremitting bevy of events that unknowingly fostered a stronger frame of heart, not always smarter, but indomitable nonetheless. And this has taken its time.

There is certainly something to be said about time. It has its own sovereignty untouched my man's will or desires. It moves undisturbed by our wants because it is exactly what we require in order to see things clearly. It is time that exasperates us as it trudges too slowly when we are not receiving what we want quickly enough but it is also time that spins too speedily the minute we find what we needed along and makes it seem that there is not enough time at that moment to last. Too slow, too fast, we are never content with its pace. Only when you receive what you've been waiting for does all that time make sense, seem worthwhile. Only then can we come to an agreement with time and appreciate it.

Never one to shy away from 'love', 'like', 'lust' or any other synonym to which we attach the ideas of togetherness, I've leapt into the seas of chance with wild eyes and unabashed hope. Only now do I see that this was ok. It was not foolish, it was not imprudent. It was in fact my method of giving every encounter my full attention of hope and wonder. And it didn't leave me as scarred as I'd previously assumed. It left me with the knowledge and understanding of who I truly am as a person, as a mom, a friend, a woman. It taught me that what some may think of as an irresponsible or, dare I say, reckless heart, is in effect my most sublime quality. It will not back down from the chance of happiness. It will not allow a grudge to be held. There is no bitterness, only hope.