In this reflection we honor the understanding that arrives late.
Someone told you years ago. A therapist, a friend, a book, a stranger. They said something that made no sense at the time. You nodded politely and moved on.
Then one day, in a completely ordinary moment—washing dishes, sitting in traffic, lying awake at 2am—it lands. Oh. That is what they meant.
Understanding has its own timeline. You cannot force insight. You can only create conditions for it and then wait. The right idea at the wrong time just bounces off. The same idea at the right time changes everything.
This is frustrating if you want growth to be linear. If you want to read the book, do the exercise, and receive the transformation on schedule. That is not how it works.
Some things need to be lived before they can be understood. You had to go through the relationship, the loss, the years of doing it wrong. The lesson was always there. You just needed the experience to decode it.
This means progress is often invisible until it suddenly is not. You feel stuck for months, years even. Nothing seems to change. Then something shifts and you realize you have been changing all along. You just could not see it from inside.
The delayed click is humbling. It reminds you that you do not know what you do not know. The insight you are missing right now might already be sitting in something someone said last week. You will hear it when you are ready.
This also means nothing is wasted. The book you read at twenty that made no sense might be the thing that saves you at forty. The advice you ignored is still stored somewhere, waiting for the moment you can finally use it.
Understanding is not about intelligence. It is about readiness. And readiness cannot be rushed.
Be patient with yourself. The click is coming. Maybe not today. But it is on its way.