The Curse of Timing
No comedian can step on stage without it. A tool so universal and so simple, but only when WE are in control. Which is, unfortunately, less than 1% of the time. The other 99% is left to luck and chance. In fact, timing is the essence of luck and chance. The beating heart that enables their power of opportunity or misfortune. It leaves us cursed with the reminiscing thoughts that seem to spur their flow with “If only…”

One thing is for sure, with a growing social media presence where you are able to peer into the lives of those ‘if only’s, timing becomes a cursed word that echoes through your head until you switch off and drown it out with somber music. Call me pessimistic, but timing does more hinderance than fortune. Or maybe it’s just me. All that timing reminds me of is the lost opportunity to laugh, to prosper, or to love.
But it’s not your fault, they say.
As an atheist, I don’t believe in a creator and even if I did I would not call him God. There is no-one controlling these decisions. It’s easier to take a stoic approach and look at life through reason when judging its chaotic nature. To discard the feelings birthed by the 99% and look at that 1% we can control. However, its wiseness is eclipsed by the hardship of its employment and like a New Years resolution, it’s not the thought that counts. Thinking about it only brings you back through the buzzing network of familiar thoughts, to where you should’ve stayed away from. Which is a problem for me, because I am a thinker. I often spend hours letting my brain dance around its synaptic world, leaping from one meaning to another, flowing in and out of stories, fixated on astonishing ideas. By all accounts, a thinker over a do-er. That — at its very core may be why I’ve come to take such a disgust of ‘timing’.
The abundance of thought, and the lack of action.
I’m often too quick to blame timing for the disparity of certain situations. After all, it is my fault. I can’t blame timing for the absence of my courage. The strength to reach out and express myself; to grab that opportunity with both hands and change the meaning of the word forever; to live out this hypothetical mirage of a future that I envisioned. Yet still, to make lemonade at the persistent presence of lemons, you need sugar too. Or agave nectar at the very least. Therefore I have to point blame at the scarcity of my kitchen cupboard and the deficit of all things sweet.
Should I learn to like the bitter water? Maybe I should buy or borrow a pound of sugar. Or perhaps I need to get some bees and have my very own supply of honey. (I should! They’re about to go extinct)
Do I go back and correct each fault, right the wrong, in hope of recovering the lost dreams of my soul? Taking back the meaning of the word and regaining full control?
Or maybe I should throw my hands up and shrug my shoulders tall, saying
“It’s just bad timing. That is all.”