Waiting...

by Kenny Campbell

"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it."

~ Arnold H. Glasgow

Another cold, crisp, and callous morning rolls around in January and I look out of my wide window to find a bare, pathetic mention of a tree obstructing my towering view of the quiet and lifeless street on which I live. This tree, I think to myself, must sincerely long for spring. Alas, it stands still in the fog all the same; it cannot pick up its roots like a dress and drag the extended framework to a more temperate setting. It must endure. I pity the plant for a minute, and then, shaking my head of these strange thoughts, I step downstairs inaudibly, so as not to wake the others at such an early hour. I push in a red button on my remote, and become irritated that it takes a whole five seconds for the television to show me the picture that I expected. A weather channel shows a forecast for that day and it is currently a bone-chilling thirty-six degrees outside. Suddenly, I realize this is true as the shiver reaches my skin and I blow on my thumbs to keep warm, hoping that maybe I can change the season if I dream long and hard enough. But changing this cold reality is impossible.

And what an idea of waiting—to wait is a unique action in which, ironically, one must do nothing to achieve. “Praestolar,” the Latin word for waiting, originally had a limitation: the action was with much expectation of things in the near future that were to be better than they were currently. In many ways, waiting implies some degree of undesirable delay, sacrifice and perhaps suffering, all endured for the fleeting hope of a better tomorrow. My discipline wanes.

As I wait, I can reclaim those things that have previously brought beauty to my awareness. This truth I discovered on that one day last year; as a result, I now enjoy the cold of winter and all of its unique majesty and marvel. It is here but for a short season, and to miss it would be an injustice. I dress myself minimally so as to endure the elements and thereby more fully appreciate the starkness of winter – to feel the sense of chill and the cutting winds. I want to feel the season and live it, not mock and dismiss it.

Yet my mind and ambitions wander. Would it not be sublime to have my driver’s license and enjoy the greater mobility and freedom brought by the internal combustion engine? Couldn’t high school end sooner, allowing for a college experience that would open new thinking and new worlds? What about being older, to enjoy the rite of passage and the resulting liberties, leading to a more full life with endless possibilities? Yet these things that I yearn for are not as liberating as they seem. To drive would surely bring suffering in the form of car payments, insurance, and gasoline, leading ultimately to the unthinkable – a job. I then remind myself of the simplistic virtues of my bicycle and public transit. I struggle with the many challenging classroom assignments, longing for the semester to draw to an end, but conceding that a subsequent semester may very well be equally or increasingly distasteful. A desire to be older demonstrates farce and tragedy; fully revealing my folly, and lack of contentment. This is likely the same folly that caused George Bernard Shaw to opine that “Youth is wasted on the young.” Perhaps I will come to my senses, or else later realize that life was easier, more enjoyable, and encompassed less responsibility during my youth – surely attributes which should not be squandered.

Yet I remain in a hurry – in a perpetual state of waiting avoidance. To many, fast food and the microwave oven are worth the sacrifice of proper taste, nutrition, and texture because of their simplicity and speed. We become numb to the revolting attributes of “food” prepared in this manner. I hope that instant gratification will not lead me astray, stripping me of all my desire for culinary propriety and leading me down the well-travelled road to obesity like so many of my compatriots. Am I doomed to become that which I despise – the shapeless sloth-like appearance of Americans, recognized and mocked around the planet? When realizing my liberty on the freeway, will I stoop to endure the incessant babble of a ride-sharing drone, all in the name of saving time by driving in the commuter lane? How many times have I actually enjoyed movies piped instantly into my home through Comcast “On Demand”? This drivel is somehow virtuous or entertaining at times, perhaps merely because it is fast.

I am reminded of the infamous Heaven’s Gate in 1997. Its highly charismatic leader claiming that a spaceship was stationed behind the Hale-Bopp comet, seeking the opportune time to take his followers to heaven, instead led them to their deaths: they took phenobarbital tablets, washed it down with vodka, and placed plastic bags over their heads. Curiously, the mother ship never arrived. Am I destined to a similar fate as that of these cultists? Will I lack contentment to such a degree that I would be willing to place my faith in a dubious cultist who promises a better life – instantaneously? Or can I wait to enjoy all that life has made available to me, and at the same time find contentment in that which is here and now?

While We Wait
by Jack Johnson

It feels right
It feels wrong
It feels like when you have it, then it's gone
I want more
More and more
And if you steal the fire
Give me some
Cause the sun Disobeys while it waits for a friend to arrive from the past
What holds us around, and around
While we wait