How Do You Wait When You Really Want Something?

We All Have to Wait for Things

Sometimes, when the air is the right amount of cool and you’ve gathered in a big open grassy field under a dark sky painted with little pockets of stars, surrounded by strangers who’ve all come together for something, you remember that people aren’t all that bad. Even if there is one lady to your right with a raspy voice who is somehow loud enough to overpower the stage speakers, you can still look around to find that people all gather together in support of their common interests. Tables are set up for eating and drinking, friends are saving their friends’ places, and people are waiting in lines. This has been the scene at the free concert series I’ve attended this summer, which featured both KT Tunstall and Smash Mouth. Tunstall is best remembered for her two hits, Black Horse and Cherry Tree, and Suddenly I See. She was lively, entertaining, intriguing, and a charming performer. Smash Mouth might be thought of as the “Shrek Band,” best known for their 1999 hit “All Star.” However, my experience at these events remains centered around the crowd as opposed to the performers.

How Do You Wait?

Waiting in lines is something we, humans, have been doing for quite some time. Conformity, you might call it, but also organization. On a first-come, first-served basis, where anyone cheating the system is made obvious and will often be bullied to the back. The first recorded time of waiting in line comes from Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History, where he described people in Paris forming a queue at a bakery as famine and bread shortages had struck.1 What’s interesting about this is the political connotation that came with “queuing,” which is explored by David Andrews in his book, Why Does the Other Line Always Move Faster? Where Andrews writes, “The slogan of the French Revolution was ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ so to patiently wait one’s turn was to hold everyone as equals, or as Carlyle put it: “Patriotism stands in queue.”2 Andrews further expands this idea of queuing and conformity to the linearity of American streets. Think the “grid system.” What I find particularly fascinating about the idea of physical linearity is how this translates to our thought processes, which go on to shape our outlook on the world. We expect everything to come to us in order. In a way that makes sense. That by performing X, we receive Y. Though this is seldom the case.

Choosing to wait in line, instead of being in a crowd that competes for attention, provides us with a key insight into the present day. We voluntarily line up for things and decide whether the outcome will be worth the wait. However, this happens less now than it did before as more and more is available to us at our fingertips. The etiquette of waiting for something is slipping away with our attention. When we are waiting in line, we maintain respect for others by being prepared with our request when we get to the front. (What’s amusing about this is that I wrote this part about being prepared before I waited in a long ice cream line in which the grandmother in front of me told her granddaughter, “Change your mind as many times as you want down here, but when you get up there, your mind has to be made.”) Nevertheless, waiting remains a part of our lives, regardless of the physical process in which it takes place.

Lines are a way of organizing, and organizing solves the problem of chaos. Chaos and organization exist as an enclosed loop of themselves. A system cannot be organized without chaos; otherwise, it would have nothing to organize. In thinking of ourselves as a system, the same is true of us. Creating our own chaos gives us something to organize. One implicates the other. However, under the pretense of linearity, we can realize that choosing to solve a problem inevitably creates a new one. For things to progress in a line, it is then required that life be viewed as a series of steps, when in actuality, life does not abide by linearity. Life floats. It is the room we embody through living as ourselves. In a linear world, we would view there to be a problem with life, instead of accepting its cycles. The problem with life is not that there is death. There are no problems with life, but the ones we’ve brought upon ourselves, both individually and collectively.

Our problems in life are the ones we’ve created, and these are determined by how we’ve chosen to wait. It is better to wait together in a community, and as a result of this, we have organized as a means of survival. To protect the things we’ve created, to carry on traditions, and to surround ourselves with problems we know how to solve. But how many of these “solvable” problems remain unresolved as we catapult ourselves into a new sphere where extensions of these problems await us? We choose to keep the problems we have because they are familiar, and we know what to expect from them, instead of just solving them. Linearity guarantees the next step, but does not necessarily guarantee it for everyone. Yet, we find this way of thinking comforting because it means that someone has solved a problem and progressed us forward. However, this fails in the eyes of equality because linearity demands that someone always be ahead.

Just as organization manifests itself in the ice cream line, it first had to be a thought. The organization of our thoughts is what we see transcribed into our reality. Being one step ahead in thought invites the idea that there is a way to be ahead. Yet, life remains entirely relative to the observer, and due to this relativity, there is no way to be ahead. Life is a closed system; it is a cycle. Nonetheless, linear thinking has become the in-demand way of thought in a world that asks us to consider life as a series of inputs and outputs. But how often have you worked hard for something, only for the reward to be mismatched to the amount of effort exerted? Linear thought is of the view that life linearly takes place. That by doing X, we will receive Y. There are two problems with this. One is that life guarantees nothing but what is presently available. A drought does not attempt to solve for rain. It exists as the drought and waits for the rain. Second, linear thinking is only one way that people think. Constructing a world around this dismisses the worldview of lateral thinkers. We can consider these two processes using the following definitions:

• Linear Thinking: sequential and logical, step-by-step path relying on data and analysis, focuses on a “standard” path or reasoning.3

• Lateral Thinking: Non-linear, involves creativity, unconventional solutions, and looking at problems from various angles.4

While both remain valuable, linearity can leave us trapped on one step when the next one isn’t made obvious. Linear thinking requires a blueprint, which may serve as an explanation for why the future resembles the past. Or, offer an answer to why “history repeats itself.” While there is no departure from the cycle of life, there is a departure from the same form of thinking that has brought on repeated problems. To invent a different future, we cannot depend on the structures of the past. Logic and reasoning can block creativity and prevent us from seeing available options that may not be otherwise obvious. Known options become present when we consider alternative routes. However, to consider other paths, we must first consider the goal. This is where I disagree with Andrews. Waiting one’s turn does not lead to equality, and linearity does not guarantee everyone will reach the common goal. You might get to the front of the ice cream line only to find they’ve run out. The resources must be abundant. There must be a level of security that ensures everyone not only gets their scoop of ice cream but also has their fair share of choices.

Regardless of how we wait, waiting is inevitable. Everything in the natural world is made to wait. For some, it is for the rain, and for others, it is their prey. Waiting is a part of the human experience and is often accompanied by boredom. Boredom allows us the time for our thoughts to wander, for us to narrate our lives and consider possibilities. However, the room for these activities is dwindling with the constant occupation of our time. Boredom is a member of the present, while distraction is a member of the future, and waiting is becoming less a part of the human experience.

The inequality present today can be realized through the imbalance of waiting. That energetically, those who are made to wait the longest receive less, while those who never have to wait receive more. Time spent waiting is replaced by instant gratification for those who don’t have to wait in line. Meanwhile, those who are misplaced in distraction will fail to recognize their place in line because their presence is demanded elsewhere. How close you are to receiving is dependent on your behavior while waiting. Boredom shapes the future. What you do immediately becomes your present.

Waiting is the Act of Receiving

We can view that waiting is part of the act of receiving. That to wait is to receive. When we are present in the wait, we realize all that we do have. Flipping the perspective to view waiting as receiving is to realize that the present provides for us. There is nothing to be desired when everything is present. To align with what you wish to receive requires rooting yourself in the present and allowing it to take shape. The things you look for reside within, and the external becomes a projection of this. What you look for outside of yourself will not be found until it exists within. To practice patience is to practice receiving because you are existing with the present, not against it. This is evident by how we choose to pass the time when we are waiting. Time remains subjective and will appear to move faster or slower. The speed at which time passes depends on you.

Even still, we’re never quite so sure how close we are to receiving. Though this mystery is solved more easily now than ever before. Google will tell you how quickly it’s generated thousands of answers, your packages are tracked every step of the way, and fall decorations are put out in July. But this quickness does not lend us to being present. If anything, it asks us to operate from a place of urgency, the opposite of patience. The issue with urgency is that it does not allow one to realize that there is nothing desired when everything is available in the present. If your desires do not come to fruition in your present, then you must change your behavior of waiting. The more you want the ice cream, the farther you are from getting it. Further, we must realize that more does not equate to satisfaction or happiness. It equates to the constant struggle of desire. That replacing patience with gratification is an impostor of reality. Gratification is temptation in disguise.

Illusions of Modern Day: We are Cyclical

As the little girl in front of me continued to grow impatient, her grandmother offered some words of wisdom: “All your creative juices are tied up in assumptions.” I immediately had to write it down. Boredom was an offering to us. It’s life allotting time to determine your future as you choose your immediate present. When we let our assumptions run rampant through our minds, we aren’t creating with our lives. Instead, we are letting assumptions dictate unknown outcomes, which limits the possibilities of what can take place. Opening up boredom invites creativity when we wait. Together, patience and creativity are a union that concocts what we receive. Nonetheless, the lives we live are cyclical in nature. We can predict the seasons not because they are a linear progression, but because they are a cyclical progression.

After a setting sun had faded, the only lights left were coming from the stage. These lights illuminated the trees behind Tunstall, giving the amphitheater a woodsy feel. Between songs, KT would share with us memories of her career and the inspiration behind some of her writing. What stuck with me was a statement she made about how we were all participating in an ancient tradition. Humans have been gathering for music, for entertainment, for millennia. How beautiful it is to think that we continue to carry on the tradition of gathering? We can all come together for something. At sporting events, you go to cheer for your team. At concerts, you set aside these team differences and go to support an artist. Gathering is a practice, and when we spend time together in settings like these, our differences are set aside for something bigger than ourselves. For the collective experience.

Beyond this is the idea that gathering is not necessarily neat. It is not tidy. It has only become such for crowd control, so that the possibilities for what could happen in a setting are maintained. A kid at the Smash Mouth concert danced on the stage, but they were prepared to catch him before anything could go wrong. Gathering is sharing in the human condition together. Organizing how we gather demonstrates control over the natural world. We are predisposed to live cyclically, rather than linearily. The day is a cycle that rotates with the Sun, waking us up in the morning and sending us to sleep at night. Men follow a 24-hour hormonal cycle, while women follow a 28-day cycle. A year signifies the end and the beginning of the Sun’s rotation. The greatest illusion is that none of this is progressing linearly. It is our mind that organizes events by order of occurrence, so that we remember lessons and apply them the next time a problem arises. Choosing the same outcome because it brought us to the next step last time does not lend itself to being a repeated effect. Because life is cyclical, and our growth is realized in the application of our past in the present. Yet, past, present, and future remain known only to the memory. We exist eternally in the moments we’ve shared with others.

The most distinctly human thing

Nature is made to wait; even so, most of nature exists outside of waiting, it exists as it is. The moon does not wait to rise, nor does the Sun wait to set. What sets us apart from other counterparts in waiting is our collective acknowledgement of waiting. Thus, we fill the time with activities. We will invent games and pass down stories. The human experience of waiting creates memories. Most of life is spent waiting, and when we do it together, we are creating something out of life. Waiting, boredom, is our material, and we are the seamstress. It remains in our waiting that we realize the truths, illusions, and falsehoods we’re upholding as we arrive at our destination. The present moment is the cautious creation of the future as it becomes so immediately. Waiting is the game of life, and the cards you play are the decisions you make. It is how you wait, how you spend your time, that ultimately shapes the life you have.

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