Chapter 7: Imperfect Messengers
The right place at the right time is rarely about location or punctuality as much as it is about possessing the information you need to deliver to its recipient in a way that is understood. It is about imperfect exchange. We are somehow, unknowingly given a situation or circumstance for us to let go of information we were cultivating yet withholding on our conscience or in our mind. Sometimes the information is light, such as telling a friend the progressions of your life. Other times it is heavy, like a confession, a reconciliation of a distant yet valued love or your new found understanding of what a giver of advice had meant. Information needs time to be processed but also needs honest discernment to be released.
No two instances are ever completely identical and therefore are different. If you feel change within you that means that the world around you has changed also. This is present perception. It is egotistical in nature to believe otherwise. Time is the dimension that moves space and objects that were otherwise still, causing them to gain new information and depth. Revisiting an old location where nothing has been moved, touched or altered in any way, present perception notices the dust being collected, the wooden cabinets becoming worn and an unopened item that was forgotten about yet still technically new. This imagined room is not the same because in your absence it spent time existing as an empty one; an empty room that had been filled with neglect and therefore gains new information to be perceived.
Our ego loves past perception because hindsight gives clarity that otherwise was not there. Both a blessing and curse, rumination on the past has a timed point as to when it becomes more damaging than beneficial. We, with our ability to intellectualize and feel, build importance out of past experiences to justify how we’d have liked to perceive our present, rather than better understand our present for all the information it holds. It is more difficult to see everything in an instant than it is to look back at a scene multiple times; But it is easier to add, take away and re-contextualize a memory with hindsight than to accept the present for what it is currently showing. Oddly enough, it is both a love of something and a pain experienced that causes us to apply our present to our past and vice versa.
Whether we are internally building resentment, guilt or admiration for something, someplace or someone there is a point where that information must be released; where a change needs to be perceived. Your present perception looks for its external outlet while your past perception runs from familiarity. Ego driven past perception makes it difficult to see the possible change you could make, because it is only familiar with itself which is unchanging. A present perception without the discernment to recognize how much time has passed is likely to be tainted in some way, at some point, if not held to a good standard of what is enough ‘change’ to be different. Being able to accept that something may be the wrong place at the wrong time is key for both perceptions; Being able to accept that there will never be a perfect place or time is the law in a world of imperfect exchange. You cannot control change you can only perceive, embrace or reject it.
Perfection is an opinion while imperfection is satisfaction. You might believe your friend who’s going further and further down a certain path will be bad for them, while they are completely happy with their journey. Are you happy for them too? It takes time to notice new information and process old information; they happen at different rates. But the realization of the right place at the right time is instant. The only thing stopping it is your ego overthinking and distracting you from your opportunity. If it doesn’t feel right then it isn’t; It is happenstance or a sign to keep processing, figuring out how to articulate the message you want to deliver and convey. If it feels right to you, and you deliver the message but it is not received how you expected, find imperfection within that. Allow the other to go through their time and maybe you will be there at the right place at the right time for them too.