Writing With Hope

It’s Not a Matter of IF, But WHEN

Posted on June 28, 2014 Updated on June 29, 2014

Anytime we are told to wait for something we truly anticipate, you want to throw out the window any ounce of patience you have left. Especially in today’s 21^st Century, as quick turn-around times for just about anything is an expectation that most of us now have. Remember books, like real books and not e-books?

Remember something called an encyclopedia? Recall homework, pre-Internet, where our elementary or middle school teachers assigned reports we had to write? We were instructed to use the encyclopedia provided to us by the school library. It was a time consuming process. We had to ensure that we had an updated library card, check the book or books out on the given subject and then research further to start putting together our notes for the topical report or essay. Now, we can search the web for nearly everything in an instant. Researching topics have never been easier, as we are in the information and technology age where our gadgets are faster and smaller. It’s also become more challenging to weed through fact or fiction.

Today, you ask anyone you know to “just be patient” and you’ll likely get some sort of road-rage type of response or at the very least some bottled up level of frustration, like a capped shaken soda bottle ready to explode. We’ve all been there at one time in our lives; some of us are just better at being patient than others. Overall, most of us can come to a mutual agreement that tolerance is not the easiest thing succeed at especially if we’re being tested. And every day we can find examples of our patience being tested. We sit in traffic.

We wait in line just to get a ticket at the DMV, trapped on a plastic uncomfortable chair with a hoard of what seems like everyone in the city the day you decide to go (hint: make an online appointment). We wait to have kids or get married, and some religious folks hold out on sex until married. We wait to find the perfect mate. We wait to learn what colleges we’ve been accepted to. We wait and we wait and we wait some more.

Everything is a waiting game and a process. Sometimes what may take longer to achieve reaps the best reward. Some people want to take short cuts in life and those individuals may get to the finish line a lot faster than others. Maybe they have better connections or resources to pull from. It can be that they come from money and rather than working to save money to buy a house, Mom and Dad buy it for them from a trust fund that’s been started for them when they were born. Some are fortunate enough to inherit a family business, be influenced by the right people and mentors, and have already seen the world twice. Others, myself included, have never been handed a short cut and have had to work very hard at everything we ever achieve. Short cuts and the easy way to victory might seem very tempting, but in the long run I have found that those who work for what they have respect it much more. If you’ve had everything practically handed to you, how responsible and appreciative are you, truly, because you never had to work that hard to get it.

I find it more satisfying to climb the mountain and ascend to the peak with real sweat and labor. I am sure we’ll get to an advance point in the future where we hop into a machine and it’ll painlessly make us thinner, remove our wrinkles and renew any organ in our body that needs repair. Though, in reality, some of us get caught up in the “If I meet the right partner” or “If I can only earn more money” and “If I can get a better job.” This is a counter-productive way to see your situation and it’s already setting you up to fail because when you introduce “if” you are basically inviting doubt into the equation. Instead of going down the “if” road, try thinking along the lines of “when.” Take anything you would like to have happen and basically rephrase it. Take the above examples: “When I meet the right partner,” “When I earn more money” and “When I get a better job.” It’s a matter of perspective, and saying “when” instead of “if” sounds much more optimistic. You want to remain that way, and maybe it doesn’t come easy. It truly is a daily practice. But, at the very least, rephrasing how you talk to yourself is a step in the right direction.

Any budding new idea, risky goal and challenging quest comes layered with a host of trials, hoops to jump through and varying levels of difficulty. Seriously, it’s hard enough to muster the courage to even begin, let alone see our dreams to fruition without wanting to give up. So, the very last thing you need is doubt creeping in, shaking your faith and slowing momentum. Don’t set yourself up to fail before even trying with self defeating words, replace those negative words with ones that will uplift and that will help to reprogram the way you think. You can do this. Remember, it’s not a matter of “if” rather, it’s a matter of “when.”