This is Your Sign to Stop Waiting
Take responsibility for your life.
Waiting for a baby, waiting for “the one”, waiting for a job, healing, a bus. I hate waiting, but I know something (a lot) about it, and I have felt that if there was a book I was most qualified to write, it would be one about waiting. It’s not that I am qualified to write about it because I know how to wait well, but because it’s been a recurring theme in my life.
For a long time I tried to understand it. Then, I tried to make peace with it. Now, I am teaching myself to grow beyond it because of a recent epiphany I had that waiting can be a way to avoid taking responsibility. This is sometimes true for us religious people who see waiting as a divine command. Unfortunately, and very much so, we use our faith to justify our irresponsibility. We “wait on God’s time”, “wait for God’s will to be done”, “wait for God to speak”, and by so doing we avoid taking responsibility for our lives.
We want to move countries, get married, have babies, leave an abusive partner, etc., but we waste years waiting for an intervention outside of ourselves. What? Because it’s easier to shift blame to anyone other than ourselves?
To us, the wait is noble. To God, (I bet) he’s had enough of our passivity.
A Personal Anecdote
In 2014, I wrote my first letter to my one-day significant other. I was longing, hopeful, and naive (very much so). In my mind, it would be a mysterious lone letter that I would present my one at the altar. Then it became two, three; as I write, that letter is nine years and over 40,000 words long.
Recently, I sat down to write yet another letter, and I thought to myself, “what the hell am I doing, and who the hell am I writing for?” It was cute with the first letter, but nine long years later and it has to be one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever done. What’s crazy is I never intended it to last this long; never in my wildest dream did I imagine that I would be writing a nameless, faceless significant other for nine very single years.
When I thought about the time and effort I wasted over the course of those years, I felt an intense anger. Why, pray tell, have I been waiting for so long? And who exactly have I been waiting for?
Fairytales assume that there is indeed a “one” on the other end of my wait, but what if there is no one? What if my lot is a lifetime of singleness?
What’s even more irksome is how little I have done to find “the one” over the past nine years. I assumed that he — if he does exist — would come through prayer or serendipity, but not the actual investment of being present on the dating scene.
For nine of what could have been my most adventurous dating years, I sat on my hands… waiting.
And who’s to say that if “the one” does show up, he would be worth the wait? How is a very flawed and complex being equal in measure to the fantasy of a perfect “one”?
Much of what I have thought about over the past few days is waiting and how I have made it into a kind of prison for myself. I have wondered where I am waiting irresponsibly, why I am waiting, and what waiting has done to me.
Painfully, I realized two things, (i) that in waiting passively, I became a huge skeptic, and (ii) waiting passively stripped me of agency.
Possibly the most regretful thing I have lost to years of waiting is my trust. Once upon a time, I was sure that if I had absolute faith, I would have the things I wanted; after all, “ask and ye shall receive.” As hope has deferred year after year, however, I have lost my ability to trust completely. This is as true for my romantic desire as it is for other areas of my life.
I no longer believe that faith is commensurate to reward. O, and I no longer trust people. My own life is proof that you can hold unblemished hope and still have nothing to show for it. But even more baffling, I think, is the powerlessness that waiting brings with it.
Waiting can breed helplessness; an overwhelming powerlessness that rankles with lack of responsibility for one’s own life, and that is a very risky thing to hinge any life on.
I hate to keep harping on my singleness, but I find that it’s a most relatable analogy, so I ask that you please bear with me — maybe until I’m boo’d up. Anyway, I have been waiting for the one, and as the years go by, I have felt more powerless to do anything about it. In fact, my most recent conversation with myself includes a decision to make peace with the possibility of never finding love.
Meanwhile, I never once tried to learn how to flirt. I never went on a date — best believe. I didn’t learn how to read a guy’s flirt; instead, I cooped myself indoors, writing sappy love letters that no one might ever read, potentially sealing my fate as the old, unmarried cat lady.
No doubt, waiting has its place as a character builder, but we must be careful that it doesn’t descend into passivity.
Good waiting is active. It recognizes that there is a time for everything, and that just the same, it cannot leave itself entirely to chance.
Good waiting is what has contributed to the evolution of mankind. It is what has contributed to the invention of cars and airplanes and IVF.
After generations of waiting and wondering, humanity took responsibility for the inventions we now regard as normal. And that is how we should approach our own lives, that after waiting and wailing, we take responsibility for creating the lives we want to live.
