CHAPTERS on Waiting
Usually when I want something done, I want it done yesterday. In a society where we are all fighting for jobs, properties, success in whatever form it takes, the act of waiting can feel like letting someone else cut in front of you. Plus, when there is constant competition for our attention and the answers to almost anything at our fingertips, waiting feels unproductive, even boring — where is the drama in doing nothing? To those who say “good things come to those who wait”, I want to reply, “no thank you, I’m ready for the good things to come now please.”
It’s easy to scapegoat London for my sense of rush, but honestly I’ve always been this way. It’s such a cruel irony of youth that we can’t wait to grow up. I was desperate to go to high school, to move away from home, to get a job. It seriously felt like I couldn’t wait. The waiting made me stressed. I would get so fidgety, wishing days away, eager to move to the next stage and fast. It’s somehow easier to loathe the present moment than learn how to enjoy ‘the journey’.
Blissfully, I had ignored this personality flaw until a feedback session a few years into my career. “You have a tendency to rush through your work. This can lead to making mistakes.” I was told by my manager, who spent most of the time smoking or rubbing people up the wrong way. My ego tried to turn it into a backhanded compliment —surely, what they mean to say is that I’m extra efficient. Deep down though, that piece of feedback struck a nerve and has stuck with me because, the truth hurts. I knew my boss was right, I did rush through my work and everything else in my life at that time.
Unpacking this irritating impatience of mine over the years, I’ve started to explore something else which could be mistaken for restlessness. That is control. Or rather, the lack of it. Feeling like the thing you desire most is out of your hands can be painfully uneasy. Made worse still, if it’s in the hands of someone else. Enduring the passage of time is like a state of perjury. Will someone put me out of my misery, is it going to be heaven or hell?! The greater discomfort is in the not knowing how life will turn out in the end.
This week, for example, I was waiting on a job-related phone call from a recruiter. Subconsciously I had been holding onto my phone, carrying it everywhere I went. My left hand had become a useless, iPhone-shaped claw. I had a stern word with myself and enforced a phone ban, leaving it in another room for an hour. Clutching on to something, whether that is hope or an inanimate object, will do very little to affect the future. It was a small act with a big meaning. Allowing destiny to be, quite literally, out of my hand(s).
In such trialling times, naturally, I turn to music for inspiration. In this case, to a musical. It’s a bold claim, but I’m going to make it. I believe that ‘Wait for It’ is the best song from Hamilton. And it just so happens to encapsulate my recent thoughts on biding time. How convenient.
There’s an incredible episode of Song Exploder on Netflix about the Lin Manuel Miranda track, in which he explains his struggle to characterise Aaron Burr. He remembers uncovering the details of Burr’s love life, which are pretty juicy. Burr is having an affair with a woman 14 years his senior. She is married to someone fighting on the other side of the war. Aaron Burr essentially waits for this other guy to die or fall out of the picture before he can make Theodosia his wife. This is a turning point for Lin Manuel in understanding what makes his two lead men, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, polar opposites. The word he uses to describe their differences is ‘temperament’.
noun. the combination of mental, physical, and emotional traits of a person; a natural predisposition.
This suggests we are born with our own measure of patience or impatience, woven into the DNA of our being. To echo the immortal words of Lady Gaga, “I was born this way.” Momentarily, I feel vindicated about the ‘ickiness’ of my own inability to wait. However, the Aaron Burr lyric, “I am the one thing in life I can control,” speaks to something else — a realm of personal choice.
We can choose to wait. We’re able to learn the art of patience. We can surrender to the things we can’t change. Make peace with the unknown and focus on the one thing you have a say over, yourself. Through the active decision to relinquish control over the uncontrollable, there is a power that lies within uncertainty. As Burr sings, “I’m not standing still, I am lying in wait.” It is a manifestation of strength and resolve. Think of yourself as the Serengeti leopard, silently perched on a tree branch, eyeing its next move. The essence of patience can be seen not as stagnation, but as a strategic pause, a gathering of strength.
In accepting that we don’t know how our stories will unfold, we are confronted with a decision. Either dwell in the discomfort of uncertainty or let go of it, free in the knowledge that we can’t change the plot or influence the behaviour of others around us. There is no time machine to grant a glimpse of what lies ahead, or to rewrite the chapters already penned. We just need to live through it. Alive.
After not one but two hours of separation, my claw hand returned to its normal state and I proudly retrieved my phone from its resting place. I had missed the call I’d been waiting for and the recruiter had clocked off for the day. I had to laugh. I guess I would just have to live and wait, a little longer.
Ah, the art of sitting with the unknown!