Life is like boiling water (sort of).
Some people's lives just have unfairly low specific heats. You know, the ones that seem instantaneously incredible, lived by prodigies, princes, those people who run into purpose as soon as their hearts start, and from then on you think you might scald yourself just knowing them. Others, in short, require patience. After years and years, you’d think they’d at least be simmering, and if not simmering then steaming, if not steaming then something -- but the water sits like glass, a windowpane you can only look through and imagine what it might be like when it gets to the good part. Until then, you wait. You pore over the proverbial pot warming at its infuriatingly slow rate and hope sometime soon to cross the Threshold of Greatness that will set it boiling like everyone else’s. And by “you,” I mean me.
I’m not patient, not terribly. If I can’t anticipate its entire course, then at least I’d like to know at exactly what point my life will really pick up; that way, maybe I could rush it. I could do something besides stare impatiently, passively into the water seeking some twitch of proof that it will eventually be anything but a mirror. That’s the catch, though. The way time works, the longer I stare, the longer I feel like I’ve been staring, and the longer I’ll have to keep staring to find a reason not to. A watched pot, and all that.
So don’t forget to blink because that’s when it will happen; a bubble will finally buoy to the surface, and after that there will be so many you'll forget what it was ever like being lukewarm. Stop paying such close attention to the waiting, and close your eyes. Dream of something strange that has absolutely no bearing on how far you feel from the destiny of your future. Go to sleep. Wake up. Meanwhile, distract yourself with actually living because the clock ticks no matter how intently you are or aren't watching, and it is, after all, counting down. Your Greatness will find you, in time. And by “you,”’ I mean everyone.
