Waiting

September 28, 2015

Greetings from the interminable,

I have stood in long lines.  I have been on hold with customer service. I have been delayed by cancelled flights.  I have waited for something to cool, to heat, to dry, to finish, to reboot.

I have waited for people, pets, buses, elevators, and planets.

And, look, I survived.  But I’m not sure how much I learned from the experience.

Depending on the time of my life, and how much coffee I’ve had, my tolerance of waiting idle waxes and wanes.  I tried to examine if anything has come from maturity, from the broad array of experience I have in this category.  It was a wrestling match just to sit still long enough to complete the thought.

Today, if you are like most people, any moment of idle waiting is filled by whatever device you look at to distract you from the moment of nothing.  The brain, addicted to being introduced to something every few seconds, can be like a new puppy scampering around the box of shredded papers begging to be played with.  I read while I eat, listen to podcasts while I drive, text while pumping gas, make lists while I am on conference calls. 

I have instructed people over the years to ‘hustle while you wait’, to always have something that you can reach for to read, work on, research, for those inevitable moments when you are forced to wait.  Most of us want to be productive, in our professions or our personal lives. In both, we feel this pressure to compete with others, or standards, or averages, or expectations.   But in that practice is the undoing of another skill.  Waiting.

Patience while engaged in some activity is different.  A woodworker slowly shapes a piece of oak to its potential.  A writer waits for the word to evolve from the ordinary to what the passion intended.  A parent waits for the child to finish the macaroni and cheese.  Here patience is honored in the service of some worthwhile action.

But the idle moment, that is another thing. 

I tried to examine what this feeling is.  Fear of boredom?  Anxiety that the time is wasted?  Perhaps pressure that we create, or allow to be created for us, to fill the moment with action that justifies our presence.  Someone once wrote that it is pride that ‘makes a noise in us’ that keeps the quiet at bay. 

Last night I stood looking at the moon, thinking that I might see some sign of the eclipse.  I stood there for what seemed like five minutes, probably much less, and what I saw was more moon, not less.  In truth, even without the moon ‘doing’ something, it was quite spectacular.  But I felt this urge, this aggravating twitch, to get something else to do while I waited.  Maybe read a book while the moon evolved?  Writing those words this morning seem so ridiculous.

My instinct is that living a full life is ‘doing’.  But it also seems to me, on reflection, that life is ‘being’ too.  And at the core of that is being comfortable with your thoughts, without having to turn them into a list of actions.

I am convinced that waiting in this context is a skill.  Like any skill, it has to be practiced until we develop proficiency for it.  Ironic as it sounds, we have to ‘do’ something to learn how simply to ‘be’.  At least I do.  Be.  Do be.  Doobie-doobie-do.  Whatever.

I have not reached a point where I am focused enough to purposely seek opportunities to wait patiently.  I will also confess that many times I have sat down to collect my thoughts in silence which led quickly to an impromptu nap.  But I will begin with respecting the idle moments that are dropped into my lap, and not crush them with desperate activity.

In a quiet moment is the potential for deep thought, for restful contemplation, for prayer.  In the stillness that comes, after the impatience fades, we can feel connected to the best of ourselves and the world that waits for us to come find it.  When we are ready, when we choose to leave the idle moment, and not before.

Hope this finds you waiting patiently,

David

Copyright © 2015 David Smith