I hate waiting. It is a character flaw.
I should be a model of patience by now.
I am not.
It is uncertainty that bothers me most.
I don’t trust easily. I am a small “c” control freak. If a job needs to be done well, I need to do it. Etc.
I could analyze ad infinitum how I evolved this way but I think it is pretty textbook. Chaotic childhood. Addicted parents. Chronic upheaval and instability.
To not become something of a control freak in such an environment would be a little crazy in its own right.
So even if waiting for what I expect will be a positive outcome, I dither.
I harbor the anxiety that the proverbial rug will be pulled out from under my proverbial feet.
Op. cit. childhood.
The trick is to manage the anxiety of waiting and not the other way around, letting anxiety manage you.
I sometimes think of the frightened bird hiding in the reeds in a vignette from the classic Disney animated film, Fantasia.
Instead of keeping her head down and staying put, the bird panics. She flies out of her hiding space into a hunter’s clear shot. I had similar metaphorical experiences in my life. Many instances when things might have gone much better had I simply kept my head down and my mouth shut.
But no. Anxiety is a powerful driver. And with a nervous system deeply gouged with life threatening memories of a danger-filled childhood, it is not an easy emotion to quell in emotional heat.
Sometimes the emotional game in my head was akin to playing defense in a basketball game. Feinting. Parrying. Watching for one move or another on someone else’s part. Blocking constantly, frantically, and in this analogy, one’s own emotions to boot. I already need a shower.
Waiting drags at the nerves. It forces you to think or, at the very least, spend time alone with your thoughts. While it might benefit you to think about anything else but what you are waiting on, that is easier said than done.
I remember back to memorable waiting periods in my life. For grades to be posted. For a boyfriend to call. For the outcome of a job interview. For my children to be born. For my father to pick me up. Ordinary life events made tolerable or intolerable in direct relation to the extent of my anxiety and distrust of life.
Let go, the self-help books say. Let go and let god, the 12 step programs say. Let go, the religious tracts say and, if you fall, god will pick you up and you will fly. That is a lot of faith to invest in reassuring platitudes. If, and especially when, life has given you plenty of personal evidence to the contrary.
I have slowly learned positive benefits of cultivating patience. It makes waiting easier. It lessens the gap between triumph and disaster. As Kipling counseled in his poem If, I have learned to “treat those two imposters just the same.” Well, similarly at any rate.
A friend from long ago suffered from a rare and capricious form of cancer. She traveled as far as Sweden to the only clinic in the world that specialized in treatment of her condition. She wrote about waiting. For test results. For updates. For word of developments on her condition. Her writing was full of frustration for what she couldn’t control. She sounded like a lot of us managing much less difficult circumstances.
My friend died. And that was the end of her uncertainty about everything. Everything ends eventually. Death is so final, after all.
It seems that is the trick of life and living. We do what we have to do while we have to do it until one day we don’t. Or can’t. And then really, really can’t.
We can be patient and learn to put up with life’s uncertainties or we can act out along the way like overtired toddlers. The end result is the same. How we handle these inevitable frustrations is what informs the quality of the journey. That is going to be a lot more important to you later than you may realize now. Trust me.
I have been that peevish toddler in the past having a temper tantrum and throwing shade at every person I perceived as an impediment to my goals and wishes. I have also hung back and talked with others in the queue misery bitching about our shared calamity. We often got a laugh out of it and a shared – if temporary – sense of connection. It was the spoonful of sugar that made the line move faster.
So today I wait again. For an uncertain outcome. In a dire situation. I am better at discerning what I can control and what I can’t. The person for whom I am holding vigil is on their own journey. I am simply a fellow traveler.
On that note, I am going to go top up my coffee. Completely within my control.
A chore utterly without frustration.
Unless the coffee is lukewarm.
I hate lukewarm coffee.
Expressive Compulsive 