Waiting

My Teacher addresses Waiting:

So many of us are accustomed to a feeling of control in our lives. We consider, react, reflect, plan, make decisions and choices – and it feels good to live this way, masters in the story of our lives.

But the truth is that we do not have nearly the control we sometimes think we do, and sooner or later even the most brilliant, the most creative, the most capable and determined among us will run out of choices, run out of actions, run out of words and find ourselves with nothing left to do but wait.

We wait to find out if we got that job and every hour the phone doesn’t ring is an eternity. We wait, for a heart-pounding forever, it seems, to see, to hear, to feel how a lover will respond when we say, “I love you” for the very first time. We wait to find out if a baby is coming and then wait much, much longer before we can know for sure that the baby is safe and well. We wait for diagnosis: is it cancer, like my mother had? Will I be okay (The kind of waiting cancer requires deserves a whole sermon in itself)? And, sooner or later, we wait for death; for our own and for so many of the people we love.

Our births and deaths are crowned with waiting, but somehow that doesn’t make all the waiting in between any easier.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

Who shows a child as he really is? Who sets him in his constellation and puts the measuring-rod of distance in his hand? Who makes his death out of grey bread, which hardens – or leaves it there inside his round mouth, jagged as the core of a sweet apple?.......Murderers are easy to understand. But this: that one can contain death, the whole of death, even before life has begun, can hold it to one’s heart gently, and not refuse to go on living, this is inexpressible.

In the end all is impermanence, and a big part of living is figuring out what to do with this information, figuring out how to go on living in a world where all things come to an end.

So much of our culture is built around helping us avoid these simple facts for as long as possible. Endless commercials tell us how we can stay young and beautiful forever and how we can achieve lasting happiness…by buying this, and this and this.... We are told over and over again that we should never have to wait for anything – if we want it, we can and should have it – and not later but now, always now!

We surround ourselves with as much solidity as possible and our nice cars and nice homes (if we are lucky enough to have them) can help to feed the illusion that our lives are likewise solid, well made, predictable and under control.

But the truth is we are always one heartbeat, one diagnosis, one wildfire, one phone call away from the reshuffling of the deck. And when that happens, we want to do something! Take action, pick up the phone, fire off an email, make decisions, arrangements, plans – sometimes we will even do just for the sake of doing – simply because we can’t bear what it feels like when there’s nothing left to do but wait, because sometimes action, any action at all momentarily curtails the anxiety and vulnerability that can feel so unbearable.

Why do we fear waiting so much? I think this has to do in part with the feeling that there is something passive and weak about waiting. And this can certainly be the case. I know I am an occasional expert at using “waiting for…” as my number one reason not to act, even when I know I should. Once I get everything set, once this happens or that, Oh I can’t do that today because I need to wait until X, Y or Z.

This kind of waiting is really just the other side of action-for actions-sake. Just another way to avoid reaching out into scary, risky or uncomfortable places. Some people act to avoid waiting and others use waiting to avoid action. Although these two approaches look quite different, they both remain ways to avoid going into the deep end of the pool.

But waiting doesn’t have to be this way. Just as the Yu family continues to live day-by-day at the water’s edge, and just as Billy’s loved ones kept their nightlong vigil – waiting doesn’t have to be passive.

We can choose a powerful, pro-active, “I am Waiting” from our menu of choices in life. We can experience this as feeling bound up, trapped and netted – or as a kind of energetically powerful stillness. “Oh my gosh, what are you going to do about this?” “I’m Waiting.”

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we often have to wait for the things we need. The ideograph shows us that clouds are gathering in the sky, but the rain has yet to fall. This situation requires patience because our personal strength is often not enough.

If one has faith and remains steadfast, one’s needs will be met and one’s future bright.

Far from giving up, this kind of waiting comes from letting go of our own self-aspiration and personal ego. It’s like floating, you can’t do it until you stop struggling and relax into to the water. Only then can it hold you up. Or, as Joseph Campbell writes, sometimes

we must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Waiting, like floating, depends upon trust. May you find the wells of trust and faith that are waiting deep inside you. May you dip your cup and drink. May you learn to relish the sweetness of living and loving that comes from also tasting the bitterness of uncertainty and loss. May you learn to act when it is time to act and to wait when it is time to wait. And may you live each day fully, like the farmer on the river who knows the flood will come, but goes on planting his seeds and singing to his children all the same.