iWait

I once wrote that if there's anything closure needs, it is the element of surprise. Let me revise that. What closure needs is actually a beginning. The beginning of Y will help you tread backwards toward X. There is nothing we do so well as putting up tremendous resistance, especially in the face of our own fate. When life drags us forward, we dig deep into the ground, leaving trenches behind the heels of our feet, we can't help but look backwards. They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill...sometimes that side of the hill is the one we just came from. Even if what we face could be cultivated into something great, who wants a fresh field for plowing when we had one that already guaranteed harvest? Even if the reaping is done and we must wait a long, long time for the next one, waiting takes such little effort, and beginning anew takes so much.

There is a crop of Steve Jobs' quotes on the internet right now, one of them is, appropriately, from a commencement speech: "… You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

I'm not good at connecting the dots. I venture to guess that I'm not the only one. One by one, we have to pick our feet up from the trenches and move with the wind instead of against it. We the diggers of dirt all know this. Think of the time wasted in our futile and quixotic protests. We all know that too. Yet before every cycle's beginning, I stand still for a while. Some people sprint ahead so fast both feet leap off the ground, and the wind carry them forward in those magical split seconds. They are the Steve Jobs of the world. They fly.

I. Wait.

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