The Waiting Game. The game all humans play. Its one of the favorite single player game that humans play with themselves.
I will do this, when that happens.
I will travel when I am retired and have more free time.
I will do this when my kids grow up and move out.
I will start my side hustle when time is right.
I will spend more time with my family when I have some time off.
I will apply for promotion when time is right.
I will work hard while I am young and make as much money as possible so I can later enjoy my life.
How often you hear this from people around you? How often you hear yourself telling these clever mind strategies? I often catch fooling myself with these theories.
Often, that time never comes. When the time comes, you have to remember the fact that you will be using the same mind that fooled you in the first place. The basic dysfunction of the mind remains. Mind has endless strategies to keep you waiting. The time is never right and never will be. Waiting is the favorite strategy of your mind to put you on the infinite loop.
When you tell these strategies to yourself, you are making one fundamental fatal error — You think you are going to live until the time you stipulated in your waiting game. Let me tell you something that you already know— you are going to die. Let me tell you something else that you already know —
You may die today.
Nothing philosophical about it. Its an idea that can turn into an absolute truth in no time! This is a huge risk that we humans overlook. All the time. If you are an investor, you assess your risks before putting your money in. If you are a scientist, you do a proper risk assessment of the experiment and ensure that you have corrective actions in place. But this is not a scientific experiment or an investing game we are talking about. We are talking about the real game of life and the risk here is — terminal. No corrective or preventative measures can negate the reality of mortality.
Do you see the urgency? If not, you have no option but to keep playing the game that you can never win.
One may argue that good things do happen when you wait. Yes of course! You can wait and may well get there where you want to go. But know what is happening in other areas of your life while you are waiting?? The value of reaching ‘there’ has to be significantly higher than the compromises you make while waiting. Only then, the waiting game is a worthwhile pursuit. This is not to say you go on the route of instant gratification. This is about the scenarios where you can very well do what you want to do now but you delay it by thinking you will have time later. You may. But you may not.
If you postpone living by way of waiting, you are hardly living.
A man keeps living like he is going to live forever. This is one of the biggest illusion man carries around. The illusion usually breaks in the later part of his life. However, the sooner it breaks, the better it is. For some, the illusion may stay intact until the last breath!
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.” – Confucius
