Waiting

A good deal of life is spent waiting. When we’re young, everything seems to take forever. Christmas is eons away. So is our next birthday. Sitting in the classroom, we’re certain that summer will never come. We can’t wait to be a teenager. We can’t wait for the first date, the first kiss. We can’t wait to drive. We can’t wait until we’re old enough to leave home.  

But wait we must. It’s all good practice for when we grow up.

We wait in line at the post office, the movies, the grocery store, the bank. We wait to hear about the job, the apartment, the house. We wait for our first child to be born. We wait for someone we love to come home from vacation, from school, from war. We wait in traffic, in the airport and at the train station. 

Some of the most irritating waiting is being on hold on the telephone. 

It might be said that some of the most stressful waiting is waiting in the wee hours of the morning for an errant spouse.

We wait for someone to die, which is the hardest wait of all when we love that someone but know their time is near.

In the midst of all this waiting, there are things that must be done. Money must be made, meals prepared, chores accomplished. Although these activities can be unpleasant, boring or frustrating at times, at least they take us away from that ever-present waiting.

How do we do it? We do it by telling ourselves that someday, we’ll tell off the boss. Someday we’ll go on that European/South American/Far East/tropical isle vacation.  In the future everything will be rosy because we’ll be doing and not waiting. 

Sometimes, even often, the things we tell ourselves we’re going to do, we actually do. And it feels so good, so fulfilling. It gives us the strength to go on waiting because they’ve always told us “Good things come to those who wait.” And we know from experience that this is true. 

Waiting isn’t easy. It’s an art that some do well, some resist and others never learn. For the latter two, it’s a rough road. Usually the people who have the most trouble waiting are the people with the larger ambitions, those for whom no matter what they have, the thing around the corner is always just a little bit better. The whole Grass is Greener Syndrome. That generally requires some heavy-duty waiting.  The bigger the dream, the harder the wait. Those who are content don’t mind the waiting. Or at least they don’t mind it as much. For if one is content, then there is no carrot on a stick always dangling just out of reach, that thing they told us about – that good thing that comes to those who wait. Content people feel they already have their good things and they’re happy with them.

As we get older, it gets easier to wait, if only because things seem to speed up. It still sucks to wait in line at the bank but those Christmases and birthdays come and go at blinding velocity.

If we live long enough, we start waiting for the day we die. In fact, sometimes, if we’re really old, we can’t wait to die because we’ve been there, done that and now it’s time to move on. 

But move on to what? Is it oblivion? Is it heaven? Hell? Will we be reincarnated back into another, different person? And if that’s the case, will we be required to do the whole waiting thing all over again? For that matter, if there is something on the other side of death, is that a place where we have to wait as well? Do we line up at the gates of heaven? Is there some sort of celestial waiting room where we wait to be assigned our next life? Odds are if we’re assigned to the hot place, the wait won’t be long. Maybe there won’t be one at all and those who are destined for hell will at least have the mercy of not having to wait. Of course, if there’s nothing once we close our eyes for the last time, then all of our waiting will be over.

But we wonder and there’s a part of us that can’t wait to see what’s on the other side of this thing we call life.

Figures.