On waiting for things

Part one: notes for when life changes are pending

“Lacking the charms of boredom or desire, waiting is neither interestingly melancholic nor despairingly romantic.”

― Harold Schweizer

Lately, I’ve found it harder than usual to answer the question of what I do.

The question has always made me a bit squeamish, but recently I’ve felt stuck.

I do things, granted. But the simple truth is—I'm waiting.

What I’m doing next and where I’ll be doing it hinges on one particular outcome; in the meantime, everything is pending. 

“Nothing to be done”

There are many ways to interpret the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, but I think the opening line, “nothing to be done”, speaks to both the futility and endurance of waiting. At times, there is nothing we can do but hold our nerve and wait.

Waiting is an inevitable fact of life and comes in many flavours. Waiting is boring, it’s exhausting, it’s marbled by uncertainty. And in the case of Waiting for Godot, at times, it is absurd. 

Of course, the stakes also vary. Sometimes we wait for the bus or a text …