The Magic of Waiting - Grasshopper

In the spirit of full disclosure, in the past I haven’t been a very patient human being. I wanted everything yesterday. Perhaps you can relate. I’m still not a model example of forbearance, but I have discovered the magic of waiting.

Legend has it that some ancients wanted to change lead into gold but were frustrated at every turn. And others wanted to move mountains, but TNT wasn’t yet available, and erosion took eons. Oh, and not to mention the time it took for compressed coal to become diamonds.

Yet, time does deliver results when it comes to erosion and diamond production, but our conditioning has us want “abracadabra” results now.

We can get results in many areas, much sooner, when we develop the skill of waiting. 

This is especially true when attempting to solve a problem. Yes, some problems demand instant solutions (think overflowing toilets), but many just need the time it takes.

There is a problem solving part of us, and it’s not always our intellect. We’re not going to think ourselves to a solution. Yet, that’s what we spend most of our time doing, and it’s frustrating.

Our intellect delivers reactions, oftentimes, ones that haven’t worked in the past. But the magic of waiting delivers a response, one that reacting couldn’t wait for.

The magic of waiting is delivers responses – answers that were always there, but blocked by intellectual impatience.

Everyone has access to responses. It just takes a little patience.

My discovery came when doing newspaper crossword puzzles. I’d been doing them for over half my life and would get frustrated when I racked my brain and couldn’t come up with some answers. I would just toss the paper aside and not complete the puzzle and mumble some not suitable words for work.

Then one day, I just set the puzzle aside and went on to do something else. On this occasion, I decided to return to the puzzle about 20 minutes later and “poof” answers came from out of the blue. That’s what the magic of waiting can do.

There are bigger dilemmas than crossword puzzles, but the formula is the same: Let your reactions go by like floats in a parade until the one you’ve been waiting for takes center stage.

I quote my late mother-in-law quite often when it comes to the magic of waiting. She said that fever blisters are three days coming, three days here, and three days going. Some salves on the marketplace would dispute her wisdom, but their results, to my eyes, are not that much quicker.

There is magic in waiting for a response. The only question you have to answer is: Am I willing to let go of “Presto.”

All the best,