As you’re reading this, you’re waiting. You don’t think so? Well, as you’re sat, looking at the computer screen, your eyes scanning the lines. Searching for anything that you might agree with. Or disagree with, if you’re that way inclined. While all this is going on, you’re waiting.
I’m waiting too. I’m waiting for my mind to decide on a concluding thought about waiting. Only then can I begin to write a post about waiting. While this is happening, I’m reminded of the sit-com Waiting For God. The show starred Stephanie Cole and Graham Crowden as two lively residents of a retirement home, whose time there was spent running circles around the staff as well as their own families. This is what they did while they waited, in this case, for God.
I’m also pondering Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. The play consists of two characters, Estragon and Vladimir, who continually wait in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. I’m particularly thinking of the moment in Act One where Estragon struggles to remove a boot, he concludes that “Nothing can be done.” To which Vladimir muses on this thought, the implication that nothing is a thing, and that they must do it.
I suppose the heart of the matter is that while we’re waiting for something; a bus, a train, a coffee to be made, a lecture to be over, our dinner to be cooked, what we are really waiting for is anything. Anything that happens in that moment will instantly be regarded as what happens next. The bus may never come. You could get on the wrong train. The waitress could make a tea instead of the coffee.
My point is simply that while we wait, whatever happens next is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. Whether we know it or not. So the next time you are walking to a bus stop, waiting to get on the bus and you miss it, sit down and relax, enjoy that moment, because it’s exactly what you were waiting for.
Anyway, I’m going to read this now
While I’m waiting for something better to do.