Timing

An appointment at work was cancelled by the client with the reason that he had to attend to his harvested rice as the continuing rain threatened to damage his harvest. At the appointed time of the cancelled appointment, another client walked in and initiated the conversation by complaining about having no rain after he had fertilized his sugar cane field. Silently and with a smile, I reconciled these opposing circumstances to timing and/or nature with our Heavenly Father’s humor. Farmers with access to irrigation have comparative advantage in being able to intervene when needed. Those who have farms that are dependent on rainfall have to be weather forecasters as well and deal with the element of timing.

Being on time and even just-in-time life experiences are appreciated, while being late or mis-timed occurrences reveal how we can be mis-connected with the flow of life. With the weather, climate change has complicated even rain fall that we are learning to adopt to color coded forecast probabilities of rain fall.

Last April, I also wrote about timing and shared the experience of appreciating how experiences can be viewed with everything and that everyone has an appropriate time. The expression of “weather weather lang” reminds me of this lesson. The ongoing dispute with the Chinese over geographical boundaries is an issue’s whose time has come. The differences between political parties and chosen alliances are becoming more evident, as the days come and go, in preparation for the scheduled elections. The rift between Migs Zubiri and Koko Pimentel has also come at an appropriate time as we all have to make a choice between the positions of “forgive and forget” in relation to election fraud. The choice of who is to be the next Chief Justice of our country has a scheduled deadline and we look forward to the man or woman whose time has come to serve from that Office. In a related manner, some friends have foreseen that when the Chief Justice is selected, the choice will also be the time to deal with the current Supreme Court’s appointed Administrator.

Learning the value of time helps one develop a good sense of timing. So as we continue with our remaining days, let us enjoy and appreciate the timing of experiences or let us flow with life’s timing.

Permit me to bring back the anecdote sent by Suzanne Deutsch to Reader’s Digest that rubs in the message of timing. Her boyfriend was not looking forward to getting an MRI. Having had several myself, I told him what to expect. “They’ll play music in the headphones. It’ll drown out the noise and take your mind off things.” As they rolled him into the MRI machine, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” played: “And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain…” He pointed out to the technician that the choice of music was less than appropriate. “Oh”, said the technician. “That’s why people have been looking at me strangely all day. Thanks!”*