Railway Crossings of Life

I am a firm believer in receiving blessings beyond one’s dreams. My life is a testimony of that. But often it is in the wait for these miracles that I fall short. That is until last week when I went for my field visit and came across something ostensibly so simple but that taught me a very important life lesson. And that is the lesson I want to share with you today.

You see, I was gallivanting in the sun on a bike, peak afternoon time, trying to get from the town to the remote villages where the communities we work with stay. For those who know small towns and their general structure, there is almost always a railway crossing somewhere in its boundaries.

I have only experienced a railway crossing sitting in a train, never from the road…until that day. We reached the crossing, both metal gates shut, and people on both sides of the track, waiting for the train to pass. Two minutes turned to twelve, no sign of the train yet. The signal turned amber to red and then I heard, the distant rumble of the train approaching from miles and miles away.

It took another two minutes for the train to finally show up and pass through the intersection where the roads and the railway tracks met. The train passed, the signal turned the brightest shade of green and then the gates flung open. We were finally back on our journey.

It was in those fifteen minutes of mindless contemplation that I realised, the amount of time it takes to prep for something as big as a train passing by a railway crossing. It may seem like a long time for the train to show up. One may feel that they can cross the tracks in the meantime. But the wise thing to do then is to simply wait till the coast is truly clear.

So that is the life lesson that I learnt that day, that 'Big things, take time'. In our life journeys, sometimes we are stopped in our tracks, with no way to move forward, we stagnate, feel purposeless, stuck, and clueless about where life is heading. Until that big break happens, that big storm passes by, and that big opportunity shows up out of nowhere. Call it coincidence or serendipity, I truly believe the magic is in the waiting.

Like how most of the growth of a seed happens underground, unbeknownst to those who look at the soil from the outside, the biggest breaks in our professional and personal lives start from within, in the waiting and the contemplating and the growing. It is in the silences like what I experienced waiting for that train to pass that we learn some of the biggest life lessons.

So next time you feel like you are stuck in a rut, unable to move forward – pause, breathe, contemplate – What are you being prepared for? What is that big thing waiting to happen? Maybe you know what is coming, maybe you don’t, but the inevitable beauty of the matter is simple – Big things, take time.

Until then, hang in there, and enjoy the wait – who knows what life can bring!