What we see is sometimes not what is. Yesterday I learned a valuable lesson about letting go and acceptance.

Waiting is not my favorite pastime. In fact, patience is a characteristic I have had to painstakingly acquire. The truth is I like action, but sometimes life offers you more waiting just to test out how patient you can really be.

Yesterday I waited for seven hours on set before the director finally placed us in a few scenes. He was filming a made for TV romantic comedy, and he needed a few faces to fill the space.  As an extra you are typically booked for an entire day. It only starts to get expensive when overtime hits, which almost always does. My major concern was not so much filling the time reading a really good book, but parking. They refused to pay for it, so I was obliged to toss in as many coins as I had. The trouble was there was a limit. I spent the better part of the day fretting about something I couldn’t really control.

Then, around the eleventh hour (literally), it hit me. “Give in. Give it up. Let. It. Go.” So I giggled as the time on my meter ran out and said how fun it will be to see if the Parking Gods are with me (they usually are). Time suddenly seemed to race by. We got three hours of overtime and praise for our patience from the assistant director. All in all it was a great day.

As I hurried to my car, I prayed I hadn’t gotten a ticket. After all, I had tossed in ten hours of parking fees already. As I approached, I thought I saw something under one of the wipers. Could it be that the Parking Gods had failed me — after all, I had been so patient. When I got closer, I saw it was a leaf.

Nothing’s true but thinking makes it so. Thanks, Shakespeare. I’ll remember that.