Hurry up and wait.

          Once upon a time, in my sophomore year of college, a girl liked me.  We'll call her Jill.  Jill was beautiful, smart, and fun.  I was overweight, smart, and awkward.  Long story short, I completely blew my chance.  Unfortunately for me, I did not blow my chance so hard as to preclude the possibility of having another one.  For months I hung on to the chance that I would be given another opportunity, long after all hope was lost.

          As bad as my initial failure was, the subsequent Purgatory was much worse.  Even knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do to get Jill to go out with me, even knowing that it was direly necessary for my own wellbeing that I let go, I couldn't.  Despite being unable to do anything useful in the present, I could not give up the chance that the future might bring some new hope.

          Worse, I could do nothing that would damage this chance.  I had to put a stranglehold on my life, so that I wouldn't take any opportunities that might cause me to become unavailable to Jill.  I was miserable.

          Does this sound familiar?  Are you putting your life on hold for an opportunity that you know you can do nothing to bring about?  If so, then this is my advise to you;  stop it.  I know you're frightened.  I don't you don't want to risk throwing away all possibility of what you desire coming to pass.  But that possibility is a mirage.  It looks like life-sustaining water now, but once you get there it will just be more dry sand.

          Often, this type of mirage comes about because you failed the first time around and are waiting for a second go.  However, in the meantime you have done nothing to change or improve your methods.  Your intent is to simply do what you did before, but with more intensity.  This will not work.  The methods that failed before, will fail again.  What you really need to do is let go of this futile hope and allow yourself to grow.  Maybe then if the chance you were hoping for comes around again, you'll be ready.  But if you put all growth on hold so that you can remain the same person that got the opportunity before, failure is all but guaranteed.

          Eventually, I did let go of my hopes for Jill and myself.  This allowed me the opportunity to correct many of the things in myself that had caused me to fail so profoundly in the first place.  In a very real way, it changed my life.  I never did get another chance with her, but I don't regret it.  I let go, and in doing so I gained very much more than I lost.

          If there's nothing you can do, don't hold yourself back with the hopes that someday that may change.  Move on.  Even if the chance never roles around again, you won't regret what you lost.  You'll only regret what you never allowed yourself the opportunity to have.