"When the student is ready, the teacher will come"

I have always enjoyed reading Larry Elder's column, which appears regularly in Jewish World Review. But I did not know until today that before he became a columnist, he was a professional headhunter for law firms -- and that his headhunter days, in turn, were preceded a few years devoted to his own law practice. He has apparently done a lot with his life.

Today's column, found here, is an affectionate tribute to one of his professional mentors, and it incorporates the proverb I have adopted as the title for this post. I had never heard it before seeing it in the column today, but I can certainly relate to it. When I read that line, I must have smiled, and I know for certain that it immediately reminded me of my dance instructor, from whom I have learned so much in the little less than a year and a half I have known her. I will never be able to repay her for all that she has done for me. It has certainly been true in my case that in what was probably the darkest hour of my life, I was ready, and my teacher did in fact come. Since then, Angie has played a unique and very special role on the stage of my life, and has done so magnificently. It has been perhaps the closest thing to absolute perfection that she will ever achieve in her lifetime.