Comes and Goes

In the last couple months, I've learned a startlingly infantile lesson: that time passes.

My whole life I've functioned as though the past were something to shake my head and smile at, the present is infinite, and the future is nonexistent. In other words, what I want to have happen needs to happen now or it will never come to fruition. I suppose you could call that either madness or impatience.

This mentality has caused me to do a number of stupid things, such as jump into relationships that weren't meant to be had, lose sleep in January over what my summer plans would be, and fret about savings before I've even been in the work force long enough to build any sort of wealth. Because what is true now will never change so things need to be figured out immediately.

Although I'm not one to plan what I'm going to say for a presentation, what I'm going to do for the day, and what I am going to get so-and-so for their birthday, I do tend to try to plan things that really have no way of being planned, such as the ultimate destination of my career, my hypothetical future marriage, and where on this planet I want to finally sink my toes in. I'm finally recognizing the absurdity of this aimless planning. I grasp for control over things that I have no business controlling at the moment, if ever.

Lucy Schwartz's song "Time Will Tell" has been a ballad of truth for me for almost a year now but even more so recently. It was stuck in my head for almost the entire month of May as I repeated to myself the line, "Time will tell, take it slow." "Time will tell, take it slow." "Time will tell, take it slow."

Time passes. Time happens. The future comes. The present becomes the past. The answers will eventually be revealed. Events will unfold. What do I have to fear? Why do I need to rush?

Another thing that I have had to repeat to myself endlessly is "[Blank] will come and go." I'm not sure where my brain got this particular phrase but it has proved so true and so useful. Mostly I fill in the blank with a date. I was particularly stressed about May 25th, because it was "moving day" for me, a day I'd leave the life I knew and begin again elsewhere. "May 25th will come and go," I'd say to myself, and it has certainly come... and gone.

I have mentioned before that I have committed to a year of no dating. As the end of the year approaches, I am nearly gripped with fear at the prospect of falling back into my old sinful and destructive habits the moment I am "freed" from my commitment, but I am also excited to end this chapter, despite the growth and personal insight that has occurred because of it. Either way, it will be a silently momentous day for me. I have a hard time believing it will actually happen and I'll actually have to deal with walking back into the ominous world of dating.

But that date will come and go. That date will come and go. And simply knowing that time will pass comforts and reassures me.

I still hate waiting. But I have found so much wisdom in the fact that waiting eventually gets you somewhere. Waiting may last a while, but it does not last forever. How good to finally know.


God bless.