The following was one of my favorites...hmmm when I was single. I happen to browse the net for it since I was so desperate when I tried to look for the book that had it but to no avail. Please devour:-)
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| http://www.irisys.co.uk/blog/bid/58260/8-ways-to-reduce-queuing-time-in-retail-stores |
The English poet John
Milton wrote that those who serve only also stand and wait. I think I would go
further and say that those who wait render the highest form of service. Waiting
requires more discipline, more self-control and emotional maturity, more unshakable
faith in our cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in
our hearts that all the greatest deeds of deering-do go by the name of action.
Waiting is a mystery – a
natural sacrament of life – there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have
to wait. It must be an important mystery because there is so much waiting in
our lives.
Everyday is filled with
those little moments of waiting (testing our patience and our nerves, schooling
us in self-control.) We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive,
for a friend to call or show up for a date. We wait in line at cinemas and
theaters, concerts and circuses. Our airline terminals, railway stations and
bus depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait in
joy for the arrival of a loved one – or wait in sadness to say goodbye and give
the last wave of hand. We wait for springs to come – or autumn – for the rains
to begin and stop.
And we wait for ourselves
to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait for those inner voices that tell us
when we are ready for the next stop.
We wait for graduation, for
our first job, our first promotion. We wait for success and recognition. We
wait to grow up – to reach the stage where we make our own decisions. We cannot
remove this waiting from our lives. It is a part of the tapestry of living –
the fabric in which the threads are woven to tell the story of our lives.
Yet current philosophies
would have us forget the need to wait “grab all the gusto you can get.” So
reads one of America’s greatest beer ads get it now! Instant pleasure, instant
transcendence. Do not wait for anything. Life is short – eat, drink and be
merry because tomorrow you will die. And so they rationalize us into accepting
unlicensed and irresponsible freedom – pre-marital sex and extra marital
affairs – they warn against attachments and commitments – against expecting
anything of anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us – against
dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to hold and
wait.
This may be the correct
prescription for pleasure – but even that is fleeting and doubtful – what was
it Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of pleasure – “Past reason hunted,
and once had, past reason hated.” Not if we wish to be real human beings,
spirit as well as flesh, soul as well as heart, we have to learn to wait. For
if we never learn to wait, we will never learn to love someone other than
ourselves.
For most of all waiting
means waiting for someone else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday
like a stray wind of leaf falling from a tree. Anyone who has loved knows how
much waiting goes into it – how much waiting is important for love to grow, to
flourish through a lifetime.
Why is this? Why can we not
have it right now what we so desperately want and need? Why must we wait – two
years, three years – and seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask
why a tree should take so long to bear fruit – the seed to flower – carbon to
change to diamond.
There is no simple answer –
no more than there is to life’s other demands -having to say goodbye to someone
you love because either you or they have made other commitments; or because
they have to grow and find the meaning of their own lives – having yourself to
leave home and loved ones to find your own path – good-byes, like waiting, are
also sacraments of our lives.
All we know is that growth
– the budding, the flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to give
each other a time to grow. There is no way we can make someone else truly love
us or we them, except through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift
of waiting – of being present without asking demands and rewards. There is
nothing harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity of our love.
But there is life in the gift we give.
So lovers wait for each
other – until they can see things the same way or let each other freely see
things in quite different ways.
There are times when lovers
hurt each other and cannot regain the balance of intimacy of the way they were.
They have to wait – in silence but still present to each other – until the pain
subsides to an ache and then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can
be woven together again in a single love story.
What do we lose when we
refuse to wait; when we try to find shortcuts through life – when we try to
incubate love and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment we are neither
mature nor responsible enough to assume? We lose the hope of truly loving or of
being loved. Think of all the great love stories of history and literature –
isn’t it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but
common mystery – that waiting is part of the substance – the basic fabric
against which the story of that true love is written.
How can we ever find either
life or true love if we are too impatient to
wait for it?
***********************************
Waiting is a good thing
only if something is worth waiting for.
How will you know if it’s
worth it? Gut feel.
What if you don’t trust
your gut? Pray. You will be enlightened. Trust me.
Is it wrong to expect while
waiting? It’s not wrong, but it will increase your chances of heartbreak and
disappointment if things don’t work out in the end.
Is it good to expect while
waiting? It is better to HOPE.
What’s the difference
between hoping and expecting? HOPING means you’re open to either side of the
coin landing though you’re more inclined to believe that things will turn out
well. EXPECTING means you’re thinking single-track…which won’t do you much good
at all.
What’s the difference
between waiting and expecting? EXPECTING is waiting for something TO DEFINITELY
HAPPEN. WAITING is staying where you are, but not necessarily expecting
something to happen definitely.
Do you need assurance from
someone you’re waiting for while you’re waiting? Ideally, yes. But
realistically, do you really want assurance from this person? It’s so easy to
just point at something and make that the reason why you’re waiting (“Because
she said…” “Because he told me that…”).
With WAITING, all you
really can rely on are 3 things: your gut feel, your heart and mind. Just
YOURSELF, not anyone else.
So should you wait? What
does your gut say? How does your heart feel? What does your mind think? If
they’re saying different things, keep asking yourself these 3 questions (and
pray!) until you get a solid answer.
THEN you’ll know if he or
she is worth waiting for.
