Perfect Timing

"Perfect timing" the fat man said as he stepped off the elevator. I shut my hotel door and filled his spot. He was right. The doors opening on cue just as I was leaving my room was right on schedule. And who would have thought I would have life changing inspiration for a blog from a little butterball that didn't make eye contact. 

For full effect, download "Lighthouse" by The Hush Sound and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

I would like to add that this post might be a bit semi-religious/thought provoking. So if you're looking for something LOL hilarious or a rant about my life as a single man, this is not a blogpost for you. Stop wasting your time and go back to Pinterest. 

I am at the end of another long, long road trip. A road trip that will hopefully validate my job as a salesman of education. I have lived off of Dr. Pepper and Cheesecake, dined with strangers, skipped with morons, fed the homeless, lost my chivalry, slept in dress slacks, drooled over soap, played Uncle to a two-year old, and serenaded my steering wheel all in a matter of 13 days. Funny though, the one thing I seem to be taking away from this shindig is a two-word proclamation from a thought provoking jelly belly. Perfect timing. 

Life is really just about perfect timing. After reading Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers" and having my self-esteem as a Canadian-born hockey player damaged for a significant portion of the rest of my life, I can admit to that. The majority of us feel that life is about perfect timing.

Listen to love stories, success accounts, people who have been saved by a stroke of genius, all of them had that one split-second moment in time that changed their course forever. When you hear swans rave on about finding that one true person they were looking to spend the rest of their lives with, it's all about timing. Either by coincidence or Karma they both were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. And then together they lived on happily ever after.

Well, at least 47% of them did. 

I think something that damns us is the thought that we are all waiting for the timing in our lives to be absolutely perfect. We are waiting for that scripted instant when she walks into the coffee shop holding our favorite novel in her hand and makes soul-shaking eye contact with us. We are waiting for that sealed envelope of glory to accept us into graduate school just as we expected. We are waiting for our boss of three years to take our hard work into consideration and promote us to a higher level of pay. 

But the thing is, life is not like that. 

She doesn’t walk into that café.

Those envelopes are never delivered on time.

And the bosses we love and admire quit their jobs at the last second, and move out to the middle of nowhere.

So what happens next? Do we wait for the next available teller to short sell us a job we are overqualified for? Do we settle for an average woman who swipes right on our profile, who doesn’t really share the same interests as us, but would be an adequate mother of our future children? Do we give up on lifetime goals of achieving a higher level of education and just remain in an adequate state of content driving an overpriced Mazda Mid-life crisis to work? Do we just wait for the timing in our life to be absolutely 100% “perfect?”

That’s a hell of a question.

To refute the doughboy’s wise words, timing never really is “perfect”. The catastrophic events that shape our lives happen when we least expect them to occur. They happen almost on the opposite side of the spectrum, when things are the opposite of perfect. All of the events that we are waiting on perfect timing for, our jobs, our health, our relationships, all of those cataclysmic happenings are decided when the stars are not aligned in our favor.

They are decided when we want them to happen.

Is that an accurate perspective, or is in the intoxicating glow of the Emerald city outside my window at two in the morning combined with my gulping down of two Chris Hemsworth films in a matter of four hours turning me a little loopy?

In a few hours I will set off for my 1,144-mile journey via taxi, airplane, and my beat up Nissan Rogue, with Stephen King and Johnny Cash as my good company. I am headed back to the place that I call home. A place where a dozen unanswered questions await me about my career, about my relationships, and about my life in general. The one question I’ll be pondering the entire trip back is the same question I challenge you to ask yourself as you stare your sunken face down into a mirror. That one small question that has been burning through my mind since that fat prophet walked off the elevator. 

Isn't it about time?