Timing
Two people meet, beginning as strangers that exist in the peripherals of each other’s worlds, and over time move into the centre of those worlds until they eventually collide and share that same universe.
It’s a story that ultimately becomes the basis of every friendship and relationship that we understand today. It’s the perfect confluence of events where luck, desire, action and, indeed, timing line up in such a perfect way to create something beautiful and extraordinary. And still, any one missing element in that concoction can create a collision of atoms that ultimately breaks those two worlds apart, separating that one beautiful universe into two worlds that no longer connect. Where those two strangers go back to living in the peripherals of each other’s worlds, never to collide again.
Letting go is hard.
And maybe it’s my bias, maybe it’s my experience, but either way, I feel it’s hardest to let things go when the ingredient that seems to be missing is: Timing.
For those two people who had the luck or happenstance of being able to even collide their worlds, and who do so and continue to do so willingly, and who wish for those two worlds to remain as one, and yet can’t because of something seemingly arbitrary like timing… they are met with the reality that no matter how much you want something, it isn’t always as simple as that.
No matter how you fight or want something to work in your favour, individuals are made up of so many more minute nuances than those four overarching variables that allowed them to even collide their worlds in the first place.
And yet, the most obvious question then is: What can be done?
And the answer is unfortunately… nothing.
Life is like a mountain river that flows through the path of least resistance and there always seems to be a breaking point where the fight that you put in to make things work, to keep these two worlds bound, is met with so much resistance (unconscious or not) that like atoms that collide at the speed of light, they’re forced apart with such aggression that the energy can no longer be contained. The pain of forcing something that simply doesn’t work becomes a detriment to both people and you ultimately end up hurting each other.
Of course, you can always try to force these worlds together, but at what cost?
I think it’s in our nature to hope. To see beyond what exists in front of us today.
It’s the beauty and the creativity of the human mind that brought us to this point where we can even write, feel and muse on these kinds of thoughts, but it’s also that same hope, that same lingering feeling of: “maybe, just maybe if I think/fight/reason hard enough then I can find that one solution that allows me to thread the needle of impossibility” that has brought civilizations and people to their knees.
To those with that mindset, my heart is with you. My heart breaks and empathizes with you so much I (ironically) can’t even put it into words. I’m human too, after all.
… And yet, in your heart of hearts, it’s your gut, your intuition that screams out that forcing something that’s not meant to be will only hurt you in the end. It will taint the beauty of the moment that you were lucky enough to stumble upon in the first place.
Letting go is hard.
Admittedly, that’s where I stand today; with my heart in my hands, looking to thread that very same needle that so many before me have tried to before, and that so many will try to thread long after I’m gone. It’s what makes us human.
Time, unfortunately, is not a human creation, and the infinite power and depth of the universe is something we will never truly understand or control.
For those of you asking yourself, why couldn’t the timing have been different? After all, all the other ingredients were seemingly there. The idea and the hope that things might be different are just that: ideas and hope. Lingering on the thing that is missing will prevent you from allowing yourself to collide with someone or something where it was never in question.
Timing in and of itself is hard to define, but remember that timing is reliant on two people. While you can control yourself, two people need to be in the same place at the same time mentally, physically and spiritually, for timing to ultimately work out. Now, that doesn’t mean that the timing never aligns with that other person, but the point is that you can’t force timing. You’re not a salmon swimming up river against the current, we are humans, and we arrive where we need to be when we’re ready.
In the meantime, forcing something you can’t control drains you of everything that makes you who you are and that would allow you to see and be open to colliding with someone else who exists on your peripherals where luck, desire, action and timing are just where they needed to be. We have a name for that, it’s called having tunnel vision.
And still, it’s easier said than done.
Because… Letting go is hard.
