I’ve been wrestling with an idea lately; batting around with it a bit on Instagram, letting it walk in and out of my head and writing it into and out of my book. I think it’s finally solid enough to expand on in a blog post. So, what is it?
Wait for it…
And, that’s it. Waiting. I’ve been considering the act of waiting.
Our lives exist as a perpetual waiting. We’ve all heard the adage “watch a pot, never boils” and it’s true. I’ve watched one before and it took at least five hours for the first bubble to make an appearance.
We’ve all felt the agony of waiting for an important phone call or text. Much like the boiling water, if we watch our phone, we’ll never hear from the other person. It’s a guarantee.
We wait for the best things in our lives: vacations to come, babies to be born, love to be found, diplomas to be earned, coffee to be brewed, the sun to go down, dough to rise, cookies to bake, and waves to crash.
There are even rooms designated for waiting. Some people, at some point, figured out how to make a line…to wait.
We wait for results. We wait for rides. We wait for and are waited on. We wait and wait and wait and wait and wait until we die.
Waiting is happening all of the time, everywhere, all around us.
As you read this, I promise, if you think hard there are currently at least one or two things you are waiting on or for. It could simply be for me to get to the point. Don’t worry. I’ll get there, but you’re just going to have to wait.
When I was dating my husband, I wrote him a dorky, love sick line about how much I hated dating long distance. I think it went “forever is so long to wait but so short to spend”.
It relates to love, sure, but I think it actually hits at what I’ve been trying to say for a while here. Regardless of what it is we’re waiting for – the return of our health, the health of our finances, the job we’ve been dying to get, the girl or the guy we’ve been dying to get “with”, the school we’ve been trying to get into – whatever it is – if we’re not careful, we’re losing the present as we wait for the future. And once the future is here, it will be gone in a second.
No matter where we’re at – old, young, angry, happy, rich or poor… we’re waiting. For something. Always.
When I was waiting for my symptoms to subside, the wait communicated that life itself was not going to be OK until I was better, and I decided life could begin again then. Not before.
Have you ever been the person in the waiting room who somehow forgot your phone and your book, and, if you’re like me, you won’t touch the magazines in the office because you’re sure they are littered with germs?
It’s miserable. You’re checking the clock on the wall every few seconds, starting to bounce in your seat, counting the people who were sitting down before you. You’re waiting your turn and life seems pretty boring until they call your name, weigh you, and then you get to wait again, in another room.
Whereas, those of us who brought our book are currently in Scotland in the 1700’s and a highlander just escaped from prison. Life is not boring here.
You’re smart enough to see I am using the waiting room as a metaphor, I think, so I won’t explain any further. I waited over a year for my life to begin again, and in the waiting, I lost too much of it.
I kept waiting for the symptoms to subside. I blamed it on the pain, and yes, to a certain degree, it becomes more difficult to concentrate on anything when your body is constantly angry with you, but this isn’t an excuse to check out altogether.
Even as I write this, my body is being a jerk and flaring for the first time in months, but I refuse to let it keep me from writing and from doing the things I know I am here to do.
Striving for things and waiting on the beautiful moments and people and success: these are good. We should always have a path. If we have not pinned any hopes on the horizon, then we will lose all sense of purpose and I am not advocating for an existence void of dreams.
Whatever you are longing for: it’s valid. It’s worthwhile, and I want you to hope for better health. Likewise you should hope for love, and peace, and always strive for whatever is better.
I’m waiting on so many things myself.
I’m waiting for time to work on my book, and the podcast and time is something I will be waiting for for a long time.
I’m waiting for my symptoms to get better again so I can stop thinking about my stupid bladder. I’m waiting for the weather to turn to spring. I’m waiting for all of this to become something I can do full time so I don’t have to feel like I am pouring myself out into 100 different buckets. BUT…
I’m just saying, maybe, if you can, embrace the wait.
Understand that in all the waiting, there are moments to be had – right then – right there – right now – right in front of your flipping face!
It’s not easy. It’s the worst kind of difficult, really, to try to live well and be chronically ill, but it is possible. I do remember moments – tiny little moments – when I let myself fully engage and embrace what was happening around me. It was almost as if the pain propelled me toward fully enjoying the good.
Don’t wait any longer.
Don’t wait for the day the pain will stop. I don’t want to scare you, but what if it doesn’t? Don’t you deserve as brilliant a life as you can possibly have? Do you see that waiting for things to line themselves up in your life, perfectly, is not going to happen? Ever.
There will always be a battle. There will always be one more thing which makes you think, “if I just had that right”.
Life is a continual waiting, and I guess I’ve just decided that I’m not going to be the person in the waiting room, staring around and counting the seconds. I’m going to bring a good book, or start up a conversation with the lady wearing the interesting hat.
Pain or no pain, I am going to choose to soak it up and stop waiting for everything to align, since I know a perfect life is just an illusion which destroys the reality of the beauty in the mess.