gifts

Spend all your time waiting

for that second chance,

for that break that would make it okay

Sarah McLachlan's lyrics -- the opening words to Angel, written about a musician and a heroin overdose -- heard once, stand out and stick. A lesson here, but not about addiction or death. A lesson I hear about living too much in the promise of the future.

In an average life, an average number of little sorrows, expectations cast off, hopes put away. We wait for a second chance, for the break that would make it okay ... the sea change that will blot out the disappointments of the past. We believe we will forget hunger when there is a banquet, forget cold when it is summer.

Spend all your time waiting and you may wait forever. Spend your time watching the horizon for summer and miss the spring. Spend your time longing for the banquet and miss the meal already before you.

The things for which we long are often at hand, if only we can learn to know gifts when they're proffered, recognize that what's important is the warmth and sustenance, not the shape or manner in which it comes.