We’ve all heard the saying at some point or another that the greatest things take time or the best things come when you least expect it. Don’t get me wrong, those are both huge philosophies of mine but there’s more to it than just the waiting aspect itself.

There will always be the exception to hard work, those everything is handed to. They could be the cruelest of cruel people and still get ahead in life. It unfortunately happens and we cannot control that but what we can control is ourselves and where we end up.

To avoid watching these people succeed in areas we feel weak, brittle, and useless in, we can’t wait for things to come to us. Yes, patience is a virtue that contributes to happiness; but if we’re just sitting around, thinking things will find us, we’re being too patient.

Life can some days feel like a game you don’t know exactly how to win but continue playing because if you roll a six, you get to move onto the next level. You don’t know what the next level has in store until you get there and to get out, you need a seven which is impossible with a die. So you need a second die.

You stay in this level for a while because you don’t know how to get out and a part of you considers going back to the first level because it’s familiar. Yet what terrifies you is good for you but you can’t sit in it forever so you scavenge for another die until you decide it’s finally time to move without one.

This can raise a lot of stares your way, especially if your moves aren’t lining up with the results the traditional, rolling a die method may have brought you. This is usually the part that makes or breaks someone in the game of life. This is the part where someone either changes themselves to fit into societal norms or stands out so much that sometimes it feels like they are all they have.

Life can best be compared to a game that feels like it can’t be won but that’s because there is no set way to win it and winning can look and feel different to so many people.

But what the different parts of it can’t be compared to is waiting around. To get into that dream college, you need to apply yourself and study to get your grades up and join potential clubs or have achievements that make you stand out from other applicants. To become the best in any activity, sports or even anything related to spreading awareness, you need to practice and try many different methods to get your point across. To have good, healthy, uplifting friends and a partner in your life, you need to be all those things for them. You need to be the most genuine version of yourself and not afraid to be that.

You put in what you get out of something. That may not always be the case as there are so many different factors to consider, timing for one and placement for another.

You’re brought exactly where you’re meant to be in life. However, certain things you desperately hoped would work out in your favour didn’t. Yet something similar did later and made you so much happier than it would’ve if it happened when you first wanted it.

The wait does make things feel more earned, more loved and helps you find things you didn’t the first time around. That’s where patience comes in but not in the sense that you don’t do anything to level up from one dream to the next, one milestone to the next.

The wait is all about you, not necessarily where you’re going but who you’re going to be when you get there.

The wait can be tedious, involve many obstacles, and even have you question if you’re enough because you’re putting everything you got in and not getting anything out of it. 

Yet these obstacles help you to realize that you can always count on yourself in any situation. These obstacles give you strength, courage, confidence, make you grow, and make you perfectly imperfect.

Obstacles don’t stop as life is all about learning and growing not only from our own experiences but from the experiences of others as well.

We’re in this world together to connect, make a difference and each make our own individual mark. 

It’s okay to feel fragile some days, like we’re reaching our breaking point. What isn’t okay is to stop everything you’re doing that makes it worth seeing the next day, that makes you you, everything you hope and dream for and know you deserve to experience. Taking a break is okay but never stop trying, being who you are as the day that happens, is the day you’ll slowly lose yourself and feel how pointless everything becomes.

The greatest things do take time and usually come when you lost a bit of hope but it tends not to come when you stop trying, stop believing in yourself and all the possibilities associated with that. After all, if you lose hope in yourself and your potential, how can anyone else root for you?

They can’t and neither can what we can’t see that brings us where we’re meant to be. It can be easy to give up, to call it quits, or to even just sit and wait. What’s difficult is to fight, to take action for what you want when it feels like everything is against you, including your decline of optimism.

Yet even when you land face flat on the ground, you can learn a lot, play with the pebbles, feel the texture of the rough surface with your bare feet and get used to making it so much more than that. The ground is the best place to make your mark because you can only go up and you do find yourself. This is what life will help you utilize when you least expect it and that isn’t from waiting around or giving up but from finding a new approach to tackle your situation.