Stop Waiting. Start Being.

This is you, very soon.

The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a

Yes or a No or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

- Dr Seuss, ‘Oh the Places You’ll Go!’

Have you found the last two weeks tough? I have. Each day has felt slow and sticky, like syrup dripping off a spoon. Sleeping is tricky and I can’t look at Instagram right now. Everyone’s house is too tidy and no one else’s children seem to be watching television.

But spring is unfurling all around and there seems to be at least some way forward out of lockdown in the UK, so why feel worse? And I’m not the only one. Everyone I speak to feels the same. We talk about it in guilty perplexment. Why now?

The mental fatigue of lockdown is really getting to us, but it’s also forcing out some internal truths.

When my own resilience drops so too my energy for pretence. I’ve had recklessly honest conversations with friends, neighbours and even clients recently, at the slightest encouragement.

Strangers too. It’s official - I’m going odd, but probably for the better.

On Saturday I felt particularly twitchy and fragile on yet another walk in the park with my children.

An elderly man approached us, walking slowly and leaning heavily on a cane. I became instantly alert, ready to snatch my four year old out of his path, but he stopped to exchange a few words about the liveliness of the boys. In that fantastic way of the elderly, he moved seamlessly into telling me that he has been in this country for 58 years, and arrived penniless and without a word of English. I honestly don’t know why he told me that but I’m happy that he did, and that is why old people are my favourite people to talk to.

Then he looked me dead in the eyes and told me I must take care. It pierced me.

On the way home, an older woman stopped me on the street to ask how the children were coping with lockdown. I explained that they were quite young and thankfully at an age of accepting even the most absurd reality. She was very interested and thanked me for answering her questions. Before she moved off, she too, intently wished me to ‘take good care’.

Do you think internal energy is capable of projecting outwards? Did these strangers sense I was in need of something to galvanise myself for the final push towards whatever the future is? Or were they reaching out for it themselves?

Either way, I need to stop waiting. For the end of lockdown, for summer, for the hairdresser to reopen. For my life to happen.

Waiting to take action is actually one of my crummiest qualities, along with self-righteousness, inconsistency and all those failed attempts to stop drinking in the week.

Even though I don’t work a regular job anymore, I still find myself living in the same old patterns. Waiting for Friday night. Waiting to lose weight so I can buy jeans again. Waiting for the children to grow. Everything is just waiting.

It’s like an internal itch that never truly reveals itself but sends me scrolling and eating and spending and never feeling full, in any sense of the word.

When we’re waiting, we’re not living. We’re in suspended animation, legitimised by the act of waiting. But waiting isn’t the same as being, and I want to be more and wait less. (I should probably drink less too.)

What about emptying ourselves in a radical act of being?

Because he doesn’t display himself,

people can see his light.

Because he has nothing to prove,

people can trust his words.

Because he doesn’t know who he is,

people recognise themselves in him.

Because he has no goal in mind,

everything he does succeeds.

- 22nd verse, the Tao Te Ching

Be like the sage, or at least be the closest you can get. I don’t want to prove anything to anyone. I’ve no idea who I am. I honestly don’t have goals, and I never really did, but maybe instead of waiting for the future I can embrace the simple perfection of being right now.

And if I can do it, maybe you’ll want to too, and that nice old man and that anxious woman.

Then we’ll all be out of the waiting place, and off to great places.

Oh, the places we’ll go!