by Sharon Hiebing | May 10th, 2010
It’s funny what happens to you that will trigger a blog post. This happened to me recently on one of my weekend trail hikes. Coming towards me was a father pushing his child in a stroller and his Dalmation dog. As I observed, I witnessed one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen!
The dog had a chew toy in his mouth and in one swift movement he jutted his entire head and upper body forward, propelling the toy out of his mouth and tossing it about 2 feet in front of him. He quickly ran over to the toy and picked it up. With my jaw wide open, I observed him do it again; and again.
I realized the dog had figured out that his “best friend” was otherwise engaged, so it was up to him to amuse himself. If only we humans took the cue from this dog and treated our lives the same way.
This dog was waiting for no one to entertain him, to play with him, to make him happy – he was taking charge of the moment and from what I could see, enjoying it tremendously! How often in life do we sit around waiting for circumstances or others to fulfill us either mentally, spiritually, physically or financially?
As far as I’m concerned, “Waiting” should be the 8th Deadly Sin. Waiting serves no useful purpose except to delay us from moving forward to the things we should be acting on. The problem with waiting is that it is an indefinite state of being. There is no guarantee that what or whom you are waiting for will ever occur, happen or show up.
You can find yourself in permanent limbo if you keep waiting for this or that to happen. All too often I see people waiting for something to happen before they will take action on something else. Frankly I think people use the results that they feel will occur at the end of the wait as an excuse to delay whatever it is they don’t want to do next.
So I’m taking a lesson from the dog! Wait for no one. Keep yourself in perpetual motion. If what you’re waiting for happens, lovely. But if it doesn’t, at least you’ll be in forward progress with wonderful things on the horizon. What are you waiting for, and are you ready to move on?
