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At this lonely stage of life, you keep wondering if you are just wasting your time pursuing vanity or not.
Being in a place where you are expectant of the manifestation of a dream is being in a waiting place. If your business is still in its teething phase despite the great efforts you have invested in that, you are in life’s waiting period.

Time may run both as slow as a snail and as fast as a cheetah when you are waiting for an opportunity that never seems to come. For a woman waiting to have a child of their own, for instance, it looks like it will take forever for that opportunity to come, yet she keeps increasing in age year after year.

For that young man looking for a job, everything around him moves slowly except the destiny of his friends who seem to have made it in life.
As children, anytime we asked our parents for one thing or the other and we were told to wait, we got impatient because we wanted such immediately. Similarly, when life embosses “wait” on our requests today, we fret. We want everything now!

There is an essence for life’s waiting period. When life keeps slamming the door of opportunities in our face despite our hard work, it is essential we discern the lessons it is unwittingly trying to teach us. It may be a waiting period but not necessarily a wasting period.
A waiting period is a preparation period. When life asks us to wait, it is obvious it wants us to prepare more. While waiting, don’t stop preparing. While waiting for the rains, don’t stop sowing. When those rains come, they will only be beneficial to those who have sown.

The amazing success story of the biblical David points to the essence of making use of one’s waiting period. His defeat over Goliath was not by fluke. It was not because he was any favoured. The young man David was a prepared man.
Though the shepherd had spent a chunk of his life with his sheep, the circumstances he found himself in inadvertently prepared him for the challenges ahead.

David was not just a shepherd but a lion slayer. Though smallish in stature, he had once torn a bear into pieces with his bare hands. He had some experience of a sort when it came to delivering himself from the jaws of the enemy.

Taking on Goliath, thus, was not any difficult task because the young man had built his tenacity in the bush. It was this victory of his that ushered him into the king’s palace.

When life put us on its waiting list, though it may seem uncomfortable, it is the only way we can be prepared for the great task ahead. Like David, our waiting place may be in the bush but it is only in such a place will we hone our skills to fight the Goliaths that will lead us to our palace.

A player waiting to replace another on the field of play warms up. That is preparation. A boxer waiting to fight an opponent trains. Call it preparation. A student waiting to write an exam has to burn the midnight candle. This is what we call preparation. In life, preparation always precedes success.

The waiting period defines champions. It is in the waiting phase of life that change makers are made. While others waste their waiting period, great people maximise it. While waiting for a job, they try something on their own. While waiting for their Mr or Mrs Right, they add value to themselves.

When you see a champion slaying life’s Goliaths, remember they didn’t fall from the skies. They have INTENTIONALLY used every waiting phase life hurled at them to their advantage. Instead of complaining, they have subjected themselves to training. They could have given up but stood in to give of their best.

All the big doors we hope to see opened unto us may definitely get opened one day. The multi-million-dollar question is, “Would we be fit to walk through those doors? Would we be qualified enough to climb up to the high table we have always yearned for?”

While waiting for manna to fall, prepare your baskets to collect them. While waiting for opportunities to walk into your arms, prepare to embrace them. Where there is no preparation, opportunities will dine with us and we will never even identify them.
Every opportunity we hope for must be prepared for. If you are hoping to get a business investment, for instance, you should first of all have a business. If you are praying for a highly paid job in a bank, you should, at least, own a certificate to work there. Hope without efforts is only a daydream.

Times without number, we waste our waiting period. We idle about and blame everyone except ourselves. We spend all this period crying and complaining to everyone that life has been unfair to us. Fortunately or unfortunately when the manna falls, we are not able to maximise them because we never had a basket to collect them.

Tragedy is when opportunity runs into an unprepared person. Luck is when that same opportunity runs into someone who is prepared for it. Everyone prays for opportunities but only a few are prepared for it. Your waiting period is a time for preparation, not a time to be wasted.

The writer is a playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications (www.scribecommltd.com), an Accra-based writing company. His March session for teaching feature writing happens on Sunday, March 7 this year.