Wait and See – Day 1

He asked her for a date. She agreed. “I thought he was funny and cute,” she said. They went to a restaurant. She watched him slam one drink after another, change moods, and ignore her. She watched herself start to freeze.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she thought. “I can’t believe I’m mixed up with an alcoholic again.” She went into the bathroom, said a quick prayer, and then went back to the table.

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said. “But this evening isn’t working for me. I’m going to call a taxi and leave.”

She called a friend later that night. “I knew he drank,” she said, “but I thought he drank socially. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have a real thing about not getting involved with alcoholics. I can’t stand being around it. How could I not see this?” she asked. “How could I be so dumb?”

“I don’t think you were stupid at all,” her friend said. “You made a decision to wait and see. You waited, you saw, you left. That’s what dating is about. It’s a chance to wait and see whether someone is the person you want.”

No matter how hard we might try to see a situation clearly, sometimes we can’t. It might be a situation at work, in a friendship, in love. It might concern a lesson we’re in the midst of learning. Whether we know it or not, we’re muddling about in the dark.

Denial is a powerful force. It can protect and buffer us from shocks too intense to absorb. Or we can be in the dark about something and not be in denial. There may be aspects of a current or future event that are concealed from us. There’s no way we could know what reality is yet because we haven’t been shown.

Clarity is a value, but it’s also a gift. It arrives in its own time. Wait and see combines the value of patience with the gift of seeing clearly.

Value: This week we’ll look at how smart it can be to wait for the lights to come on.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

The post Wait and See – Day 1 appeared first on Melody Beattie.