Chapter 7: Imperfect Messengers
The right place at the right time is rarely about location or punctuality. It is about offering 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 something 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 given advice had meant. Without doubt, 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 a change within yourself that means that the world around you has also changed. It is egotistical in nature to believe otherwise. This is your “present perception”; the ability to notice yourself and your surroundings in tandem.
Time is the dimension that moves spaces 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 as before because in your absence it spent time existing as an empty one. An empty room that had been filled with neglect by the neglectful, gaining 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. Interestingly 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 and where a change needs to be perceived. Your present perception looks to share its information while your past perception runs from familiar cues of times speaking up went wrong. However, that type of past perception makes it difficult to see the possible change you could make. Your past perception is only familiar with itself which is unchanging. A good present perception needs discernment to recognize how much time has passed since the past and a willingness to try changes that still fit the standard of what is enough to be “different”. Being able to accept that something may be the wrong place or wrong time is key for both perceptions. Being able to accept that there will never be a perfect place or time is law in a world of imperfect exchange. You cannot control change, you can only create, perceive, embrace and 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 feels instant. The only thing stopping you from sharing is overthinking, distracting you from your opportunity. If it doesn’t feel right then it isn’t; keep processing, figuring out how to articulate the message you want to deliver, convey. If it feels right to you, and you deliver the message but it is not received how you expected, allow the imperfection within that. Allow the other to go through their time and learn the lesson necessary to try again if time offers that chance. But if you’re waiting for the right place at the right time, understand that you need to create such a thing, not waiting for it to find you.