How many times have you ever tried to find a short cut for something (i.e. get something done quicker) only to see it backfire and result in it taking far longer than it should have if you had just remained a little more patient? Today’s question comes because of the many times I’ve done this myself, including just the other day.
It was a Monday afternoon, 2:45pm to be exact, when I decided to go catch a movie starting at 3:15pm on the other side of town. My drive there had gone by pretty swiftly the entire way until I reached the last leg of my journey. As I exited the highway and could see the theater slightly off in the distance, I came to a sudden halt behind a considerably long line of cars waiting for the light to turn. Each of us were needing to turn left at that light and I knew that I’d have to wait for at least two more iterations of the signal before I was even going to reach it. That’s when I glanced at the time and noticed it was 3:11pm.
“Four minutes and the movie is going to start. Crap!” I said to myself.
You can probably imagine what came next. I grew totally impatient and decided it was going to be far faster to get out of that line of cars and take a right at the light instead. As then I could quickly head down to the next light, do a U-turn, and head back towards the theater to save some time. Of course this all went as hoped right?
WRONG!
First, I got caught at the light behind someone who was hesitant to take a right into the traffic already there. Then when I actually took the right turn and reached the next light, I noticed there was a “No U-turn” sign. I had to then turn around in a gas station and proceeded to get stuck behind another cautious driver. Once I was able to get back onto the road heading in the direction towards the theater, I ended up just missing the light I had impatiently waited at originally. So as I sat there and grew even more irritated, I noticed the cars I had been waiting with were already long gone. In the end, I arrived at the theater about 10 minutes later than I would have if I had just remained a little more patient and not opted for a short cut that proved to be more of a long cut. But even more important was realizing that movies have about 20 minutes of previews before they actually start these days, thus I really didn’t need to attempt the short cut in the first place. You see life’s a lot like this, teaching us subtle lessons along the way, but many of us tend to become so self-consumed with our own time tables that we end up overlooking them.
The bottom line is that most of the time we attempt to rush anything along it frequently doesn’t turn out so well for us. That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that looking for short cuts in life is really doing nothing more than giving power to the energy of impatience within us. This is exactly why I’m grateful that something as simple as attempting to avoid a traffic delay at a stoplight the other day ended up being another great reminder from my Higher Power of an area in my life I still need to work on…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
