On Divine Timing and sandwiches

If the pandemic has taught us anything collectively, it’s that the days can be frigging long but the years are still short. As the fifth (or is it the sixth? Seventy-fourth? ) wave finally wanes, we are once again faced with the familiar existential angst of doing/achieving/performing, coupled with a newfound urgency to taste, feel and lick EVERYTHING we have been deprived of in the last 24 months.

I’m already exhausted and I haven’t even started licking half the stuff I want to.

Which brings us to the concept of "Divine Timing", or, as I like to think of it, the Universe’s infinitely infuriating way of teaching you shit lessons by making you wait for anything worth having in your life. It sucks but in hindsight the teachings are always so fucking on point it hurts. Infuriating I tell you.

Waiting for things to fall into place once you have lined all your ducks in a row and are anxiously waiting for the situation to evolve is a bit like ordering a sandwich at the restaurant when you’re starving. You tell Sylvia your friendly wait-person your want the tuna salad sandwich, delicious gherkins and homemade aioli with a decadent side order of hand-fried potato chips (hey, I’m a fancy lady, k?), and can already feel all the juicy fishy goodness in your mouth.

It literally takes all your willpower not to ask Sylvia to report on the state of your sandwich whenever she comes by with the water pitcher: were the slices of bread taken out of the bag? Was the sauce evenly slathered on the bread yet? Is the tuna can even opened at this point? Every fiber of your being wants to know, now, when that lovely tasty sandwich will find its way to your table.

But, alas, Sylvia and the short order cook have other priorities. You don’t know this, but the bread is all the way in the freezer downstairs. Someone left the aioli on the counter next to the stove and it’s now liquid and has to be thrown out and a new batch made. And don’t even get them started on 16-year-old prep boy Luka who was in charge of producing the chips. Guess you’ll be having Lay's my friend.

All this to say that all the different processes required to bring that sandwich into your reality are not aligning at this point, and that you may want to scarf down a few packets of soda crackers as you wait. It could be a while. Your lesson in this case may be that next time you order something off the menu du jour. Or carry a little Kind bar in your coat pocket. I’m just saying.

And then, as you are on your last shred of sanity, as you’re about to start sucking on the ketchup bottle for nourishment, the sandwich appears. It looks nothing like the picture in the menu, and those chips are definitely not hand-made, but fuck it. You will savor every crumb of that sandwich and lick the plate after.

That’s Divine Timing for you. You will probably not quite get what you thought you wanted, and not a minute too soon, but eventually the Universe will provide something for you to lick. And it will be delicious, because joy is your birthright.

Bon appétit my loves ;)