I want to live in the fast lane. I don’t mean snorting cocaine and spending money like there’s no tomorrow. I mean I want things to happen quickly like fire – swift, consuming, noticeable. Instead, things happen like a seed planted in dirt – slow, unassuming, subtle.
Here’s a true story: In January, I planted California poppy seeds. In March, everyone else’s poppies started to bloom. Mine did not. I checked my poppies frequently, searching for signs of buds. Each day I stared at verdant green leaves, but no hints of orange. Finally, in about mid-May, the first bud appeared and then suddenly, a flower. It thrilled me to see orange after so many months of waiting. I beamed from ear to ear and pride swelled within me. But note, it took months, MONTHS, for my poppies to catch up to everyone else’s.
Seemed apropos. Not my poppy, but mine looked just like this.
Right now, I feel like those poppies, behind the times. Many of my friends are progressing in their lives. They’re buying houses, getting married, having babies, starting businesses. They are dating new people, starting new jobs. Things are not perfect – I am privy to their challenges as well as triumphs – but stuff is happening in their lives. The same is not true for me. Instead, I am a poppy plant with no hint of a bud.
A part of me thinks something is wrong that I’m not cycling with my peers. I’m not blooming while they are. However, I’m reminded of what my spiritual teacher said regarding movement. Movement is systaltic, like a heart beat. Do you know how a heart pumps blood? I learned this ages ago in AP bio. A heart is like a syringe – it fills up with blood, pauses at fullness, and then pushes all the blood out. In all of life, we experience this cycle. It’s the natural order of things to expand, pause, and contract.
I think I’m still in the expanding phase. I haven’t reached fullness yet. I’m still pulling nutrients from the soil. When I look at those around me, it’s hard not to compare myself with them. I know, I know, comparison is the thief of joy. I know compare usually leads to despair. I know I’m not doing myself any favors by comparing my life to anyone else’s, yet, I’m doing it anyway. It’s hard not to. When I think about my poppies, when I think about life being systaltic, I feel a smidge better because I’m reminded I am in my own cycle. It may take longer for things to bloom, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.
I dream of a world where we remember we each have our own cycles. A world where we realize sometimes things happen quickly and sometimes things happen slowly. A world where we realize there’s not much we can do about timing other than to take the required action and let go of the rest. And then one day, we’ll look and see a bloom.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
This week I experienced a breakthrough around impatience. Normally when I’m impatient, I roll my eyes and say, “Oh look. This again.” Or I stew in my impatience, allowing myself to feel all the irritation and frustration. When impatience bubbled up for me recently, instead I became curious. “Why am I impatient? What’s going on here? Are there other things at play?” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is, “Yes.”
When I’m impatient, two other forces are at work. The first is scarcity – I think there’s not enough of whatever it is. If I’m waiting in line and feeling impatient, it’s because I feel pressed for time, for example. The second force at play is a lack of perspective. My career is a great example. I want to be a bestselling author, I want to touch a lot of people on a grand scale, to serve others in a big way using my words. Impatience comes in because I think if I’m not doing those things right now, I won’t ever do them. I get caught in the present moment in a bad way. A friend told me when her daughter skins her knee she’ll exclaim, “My knee hurts and it’s always hurt and it will always hurt!” When I’m impatient, I act like that.
There are multiple forces associated with impatience. Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash.
This week when impatience presented itself I asked, “What if most of my dreams will come true later? Is it possible they’re in my future?” and I felt better. As I’ve seen over and over again, for better or for worse, I have no idea what the future holds, so yeah, it’s possible I can still have what I want, just not right now. Furthermore, I have a lot of life left, I hope. I likely won’t drop dead in the next 30 seconds so maybe down the road the things I want will happen. What helps me here is thinking about past experiences. For many years I wanted to visit Italy. Every time someone mentioned Italy or shared pictures of their travels, envy and impatience overtook me. “I want to go to Italy too! Why hasn’t it happened for me?” And then in 2012, I finally visited the country in a grace-filled way better than I could have imagined. My dream did come true, but it took a while.
My spiritual teacher says that “whatever happens in this universe of ours is nothing but an expression of Cosmic desire or Cosmic will … when a human desire and His desire coincide, then only does the human desire become fruitful, otherwise it is a sure failure.”
That means when I align my desire and higher power’s desire, dreams come true. It also means when I’m impatient, I don’t recognize life is a long game, I hope. When I’m impatient, I’m thinking in terms of instant gratification as opposed to syncing my will with the divine’s. It also means I’m not recognizing the natural rhythm of life. The environment has seasons and so does life. In the dead of winter it’s tempting to believe spring will never arrive, but it always does, when the temperatures rise, when the snow melts, when the sun shines brighter. Dreams are like that too – they blossom when the environment is ideal. When I’m impatient it’s like going outside in 3 feet of snow asking, “Why aren’t the tulips in bloom?” They will bloom, but I have to wait, and that means patience.
I dream of a world where we realize everything takes time and just because something hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t. A world where we remember just like Earth, our lives and our dreams also have seasons. A world where we maintain perspective about the future and practice patience.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.