Life is like a self-service

This story is about the first visit of "Emmet Fox", contemporary writer and philosopher, from a self-service restaurant, when he came to America for the first time. 

He never been in that kind of restaurants. He waited for a waiter but nobody came to him, he stayed on his seat for a long time. Every moment that passed, he became more angry because the waiters did not looked at him at all. He looked at the people that were came after him and they all had their plates full of food.

Finally he went to a man that was sitting on the seat next to him. Emmet told him" I am sitting here for almost 20 minutes and nobody cares about me, but you are here for only 5 minutes and you have your food in front of you. What is the problem? How do the restaurants work in this country?”

The man was really amazed, he looked at Emmet and told him" This restaurant is a self-service", he pointed to the end of the restaurant where the foods were then he continued "go there and grab a plate then choose every food you want, pay the money and then come here and eat your food!".

Emmet Fox was really ashamed and did everything that the man was telling him to do, but when he put his food on the table, something came to his mind. Yes, life is like a self-service. All happiness, despondences, chances and situations are in front of us, but this is us that are sitting on our seat toughly and looking to the others to see what they got in their plates. We always look at others plates to see what they have more than us and we never think to stand up and see what are there for us and choose everything we want.

WHEN LIFE DOES NOT GIVE YOU ANYTHING, IT IS BECAUSE YOU DO NOT WANT ANYTHING FROM  IT.
I learned that you should never wait for something to turn up. Don’t be content to let things drift along, hoping for the best. It is not spiritual to ‘put up’ with inharmonious conditions. If the conditions of your life are not to your liking, you must get to work on your own consciousness and, by raising that above the outer picture, cause those conditions to become something doing this until you find your True Place nearer to your heart’s desire.