The Waiting Game
Today we vote, worry, and wonder — but mostly, we wait.
There are few things unsexier than waiting.
Though in theory this practice gets easier as we mature, in reality I’m not so sure. My hunch is that the shape of the difficulty simply changes. Instead of shrieking demands and melting into tears like children, we adults carry around frozen, nervous bodies and find ourselves making ill-advised decisions. Whether you’re 2 or 52, it is just plain hard to calmly occupy time while grand anticipation eats away at you.
For Americans of all stripes, today is a waiting day.
It comes at the tumultuous end of a waiting season that unfolded within a miserable year of waiting — which was, of course, just one of four years that many, many human beings on this planet have been painfully waiting out.
So yeah, a lot of waiting.
If you’re keen to understand how waiting makes you bananas (Do you catastrophize? Do you get stuck?), Markham Heid’s excellent piece on the science of uncertainty for Elemental has you covered.
As I watch myself itch and scratch for Election Day answers (even as I know there are none yet), I’m reminded of something meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg once taught me: As human beings, we are not trained for subtlety. We’re trained for peak experience. How true. We know how to soar and we know how to rage, but we’re not so good at occupying the (many) valleys between our peaks.
So today, along with millions of others waiting in line to vote and waiting at home after voting, I’m waiting — and challenging myself to stay in this unsettling valley of a thousand unknowns, despite my searing urge to escape. And if I’m still here tomorrow (or next week or next month), maybe I’ll be a touch better at waiting. That’s a subtle victory, but I’ll take it.
