“Kung para sa iyo, para sa iyo” – Filipino saying
After graduation, my son was very impatient to get a job and earn his own money. Peer group pressure compounded it. He submitted his job application to many companies. And he got called for job interviews.
After the fifth job interview, he was very discouraged. More so when he learned that many of his co-graduates had already been accepted in other companies.
There was one company that was willing to take him in but I was skeptical about its stability. I thought it wasn’t right for him. But my son was impatient to get a job, any job, so he wouldn’t lose face, but I put my foot down. He was seething, of course, in frustration and desperation.
But one day, I chance-met an acquaintance of mine working with a mutual fund company. When she found out I had a son who just graduated, she mentioned to me about a vacancy in the accounting department. I told this to my son, who reluctantly applied for it. But because he was so used to job interviews, he was at ease and was able to convey self-confidence. He got the job.
Waiting can sometimes be discouraging, but if one has the right attitude, waiting could just be a process of building up to the right, or should I say, the ripe moment. A series of failures are sometimes the prologue to something great about to happen. A rejection can just be a redirection. That’s life.
Yes, by all means practice carpe diem, or seize the day. But learn how to wait for the ripe moment. It will come when it will come, or should I say when the moment is due. That’s when to seize it.
Most of the time, waiting situations are necessary. We wait for the seasons to change. We wait for plants to grow. We wait to bring things to fruition.
Nothing bears fruit without a period of waiting. We wait for an idea to develop and evolve in creative work. We wait for a relationship to grow before we make a commitment. We wait for children to grow and develop their inclinations and aptitude.
When we can’t wait and we rush things prematurely, we often get botched relationships, destructive commitments, and poor judgments that can lead to catastrophe.
Everything is a matter of pacing and rhythm. Learning to wait for your turn. Learning to wait when to strike. Learning to wait until you decide that a relationship is right.
However, that being said, waiting does not mean being laid back or being passive or being idle like the folkloric character Juan Tamad who waits all day long for the ripe guava fruit to fall, when in fact he can just easily pluck it with his hand.
Far from it. Waiting is a positive and proactive attitude. It means being productive and creative during that period of waiting. One has to strive hard to make things happen, to influence events, to move people.
Have you heard about serendipity? It’s a knack that you should cultivate. I remember a character in a movie I saw on cable TV saying that serendipity means “keeping it.” There are acquaintances or possessions that are a result of chance encounters or discoveries that you keep without any good reason. Keep them. You never know when that person you nurture or that thing that you keep will turn out to be useful later. That piece of paper where you wrote down a telephone number or address may prove to be useful one day. Don’t throw it away. While waiting, establish contacts, or get into activities or endeavors that will enrich you and that will lead you to the fulfillment of your goals in what we call serendipitous manner.
Some call it Divine Providence, some call it synchronicity, and some call it Flow or The Force of the Universe. Whatever it is called, there is an unseen power or force that makes things happen for us when we deserve it.
Someone named Benjamin Hoff wrote:
“Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least they do when you let them, when you work with the circumstances instead of saying ‘this isn’t supposed to be happening this way,’ and trying hard to make it happen some other way. If things work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time.”
Things that have serendipitously happened in my life have proven that life has its own way of working things out. Those who believe that there is an invisible hand at work in mysterious ways, those who have faith and who believe that there is a power that is moving events and people, they tend to flow more freely with what life gives them.
It isn’t that they merely lie back like Juan Tamad and do nothing but wait for the guavas to fall. They strive hard to make things happen, to influence events, and to move people.
However, when they have done what they could, they wait and take what life gives them, even if it isn’t what they expected. They know enough to understand that there are many dynamics at work in the world that they cannot control.
So let’s just do our individual best, and then let chips fall where they may. Somehow, everything will work out for the best, even if, at times, it doesn’t seem that way. After all, the good old book assures us: “All good things come to those who wait.”