I was watching seagulls at the beach recently. A number of them were sitting so still in the blue-green waters of the Atlantic that they looked like duck decoys an artist had carefully carved. The water moved, but the gulls remained motionless. I asked a local if that’s how gulls sleep. He said, “They’re not sleeping. They’re waiting.” “For what?,” I continued. He answered, “They’re waiting for the right fish to come along to be their breakfast.” Deciding to pursue the topic a little further, I inquired why other gulls were flying above the waves, occasionally diving into the water to snare their food. He replied (I thought rather philosophically): “Sometimes we have to find what we want in life. Sometimes, if we wait, it finds us.”
Sometimes we have to find what we want in life. We have to prepare for it. Work for it. Invest in order to reap the returns. Rarely, e.g., does one decide on a career one day and begin working in it the next. If you know of a surgeon who did that, don’t let him/her perform an operation on you. It requires years of study, internship, and residency before people in that profession are qualified to take scalpel in hand. If your attorney was playing on the high school ball team last week, said, “I want to be a lawyer when I grow up,” and this week has hung out a shingle, don’t entrust your legal matters to him/her. If you do, then both you and your faux legal representative may wind up sharing a cell. Again, it takes years to prepare oneself for that work. Much is the same when it comes to a successful marriage and family life. Happiness and peace at home do not just magically occur. Instead, we tend to reap what we sow. Therefore, we have to work at sowing the right seeds. I had some health concerns a year ago. As it turned out, all of it had to do with the fact that for years I had eaten far too much of all the wrong foods. My physician told me I needed to lose weight. I sincerely longed to do so. But, mere longing didn’t take off a single pound. Instead, I had to do the very difficult work of exercise (not my favorite activity) and changing my diet (salads and protein shakes in place of pizzas and bread pudding). The bottom line is simply that sometimes we have to work strategically and diligently to achieve our desired results in life.
Sometimes, though, if we wait, what we want in life finds us. How many people found just the right life partner when they weren’t even looking for one? Or, when they were looking for someone entirely different than the one who showed up? A positive perspective is like that. We take note of the good things and good people in life. We realize that happiness, though not a constant experience, is a recurring experience. We observe the exquisite beauties of nature all around us. We recognize that there are certain friends who celebrate with us in times of joy and support us in times of need. We acknowledge that though there may rarely be an excess of anything, most of the time we still have “enough.” After living a certain number of years, we discover that all those things are true, and our perspective becomes positive. Our worldview isn’t dependent on any given moment. Even during troubling epochs of history, we understand that there have been troubling times before but we always came through them. As Dr. King rightly observed, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” Live long enough, pay attention, and positivity (not naivete, mind you, but positivity) finds us. Faith is yet another example. When we are frenetic about life (as is often the case when we are young and trying to keep so many plates spinning), we sometimes wonder where God is or if God is real at all. As we age and comprehend the wisdom of the counsel, “Be still and know …,” we come to understand that He has been there all along.
“Sometimes we have to find what we want in life. Sometimes, if we wait, it finds us.”