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When things go wrong it is hard to remind yourself that the problem is not going to last forever; that even though it feels like it never is going to end, it will. My favorite Shakespeare quote is, “This too shall pass.” Simply because that is the one constant I have found in life… No matter the situation, good or bad, it will pass. So does that cliché, “Good things come to those who wait” become null if you follow Shakespeare’s words? Sure, good things come to those who wait, but that is because each state of being is essentially temporary.
Another reason I disagree with the saying, “Good things come to those who wait” is because it sounds as if you are just waiting around for the next thing to happen without working towards that good thing. I will say at least the saying isn’t, “Bad things will come to those who are busy” but that does seem to ring slightly true. It seems that I have the least amount of luck when I am the most proactive; I have never had a bad experience happen to me while I was sitting around waiting for something or someone.
When I have been proactive about my feelings for someone, sure enough, their inevitable disinterest in me occurs. If I would have waited would things have been different? Would there have been a good outcome? I don’t really think so, but I will continue in order to prove my point. When I was just waiting in line to buy a pack of gum back in April, I happened to find a $100 bill. It happened to be at a time when I was low on cash… Is this an example of a good thing happening to someone who was patiently waiting? I don’t think so. So often while I am busy doing one thing another thing will pass me by, if I had been waiting for that “good” thing would it have happened? Maybe, maybe not. I guess that’s when you throw in that other cliché, “everything happens for a reason.”
I do understand the real definition of the saying, that it is implied that you are working towards that goal while you are waiting for that “good thing.”
I have goals, but sometimes I make mistakes which create detours in my roads along the way. At times these detours will teach me more about myself than I ever could have realized and they teach me about the people in my life. They re-prioritize my priorities and make me realize how easily things can change what I have taken for granted. Small liberties taken away can result in big changes, ones I may never have noticed… Someone once told me that I wasn’t learning from my mistakes, but I don’t know how anyone can judge that except for me. Maybe they have learned something from the mistakes I have made and that something is inherently different than what I learned from the experience. I guess it makes sense that we each would take different things away from different experiences shared.
Oh well, I’m sure I’ll feel differently later.
Quote:
I may not be there yet, but I’m closer than I was yesterday.
.
September 22, 2008 at 10:42 am
By nature, I must offer a counterargument. I don’t think that things necessarily pass, I think the person merely forgets them or suppresses them, voluntarily or not, by resolving the problem or running from it. Also, I have never known you to have a second in your life when you were not being proactive about something, pursuing a goal or person or job, etc. I would have interpretted “good things come to those who wait” to imply that the more you desire something, the time and suspense can kill you. After wanting something so badly for such a long time, if you do not first give up on it, it will be exponentially better when it finally comes to you. Just my 2 cents.
As for your goals, I don’t think your mistakes are detours, because they don’t always lead you back onto your original route, I think they are meant to change you and maybe change your plans or goals. I don’t necessarily mean to apply this to any particular events in your life, but anyone’s life in general. I think mistakes force you to take your eye off the prize for a second and tend to other important matters that somehow you need to do or know before you get to the prize. It’s experience under your belt. *Tangent* For example, if Sally Jo hopes to someday become an accountant, and one day at her internship she punches in a wrong number, screws up an entire report and gets fired, she can walk away with the experience and either apply it to her future accounting work or she might realize “wow, if there is no room for mistakes, maybe I don’t want to be in this profession.” I digress. I think your point about others learning from your mistakes is a good one. I also think when someone tells you that you are not learning from your mistakes, it is possibly because they see you in a way that you cannot see yourself, from a 3rd person perspective. There are a million ways to argue this (varying perceptions on life, society, perfection, etc), but I think until you have demonstrated that you learned, changed, and grew in the way they expected you would, they will never know if you learned from your mistakes. Of course, they may have different plans for you, ways they think you should act, speak, think, etc, than you have for yourself. I don’t think anyone, not even yourself, can judge completely whether or not you have learned from an experience, and I’m not sure it’s even possible to stop learning from an experience, because it fundamentally changes who you are and even the smallest incident down the road that causes you to reference a past experience will alter you, your direction, or your decision. And I end with the cliche: only time will tell.
I apologize for the rambling and the excessive amount of incomplete or incoherent thoughts. =)
September 23, 2008 at 9:43 am
ahh yes, only time will tell