Why Is Everything Taking So Long?

Ram Dass said,

“The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process under which, over which, you have no control.”

Sometimes waiting becomes its own kind of suffering.

I know.

Not only because life is hard now.

Because the mind tells us now is forever.

You know this waiting.

Waiting for someone you love to meet you halfway.

For a marriage to feel warm again.

For grief to soften.

For your own life to feel like yours.

Waiting to know what to do next.

No one warns us about the long, flat middle.

That is when the mind starts asking questions:

It has been this long. Shouldn’t I be further by now?

If this were going to change, wouldn’t it have changed already?

The waiting becomes evidence.

Evidence that nothing is happening.

And that nothing ever will.

But the clock can measure only what has become visible.

It cannot measure what is being absorbed and learned!

Ram Dass makes me think of two clocks.

And we need both. Always.

Because suffering thrives when we rely only on one clock.

And when we see the difference the difference, we see a way through.

You may not be stuck.

You may be measuring your life with the wrong clock.