The Waiting

The skies are grey, with a hint of pink - the color that comes through sometimes, when the blue wants to appear, but isn't quite there.  It's going to be sunny, so the sky-watchers say.  Temperature is at 56 degrees, fahrenheit and feels warm.  Today is Thursday. 

There are times when things are not speeding along.  The norm these days is feeling like time is moving too fast, with too much going on in a given day or week. In fact, the week feels like it moves in a snap - and then, where did a month go?  Is it true that time is always just the same and we are the ones changing?

It has been decades of moving against deadlines, so saying that the clock is running faster doesn't seem quite right.  In those times when deadlines were on the horizon, it seemed there was never enough time, too.  But today, the dance with time feels a little different.  Perhaps the shift in context is it.

Among friends and family, there are clear battles with mortality.  There is a point in life apparently, when the adventures in the world end and the adventures in the mind and heart begin (if the mind stays intact and the heart stays courageous).  In the interior adventure, the questions arise about adjusting to the new reality of a change in capacity to "do" and now focus goes to how one can "be" with the self that is asking one to, "Wait up."

In the waiting, a lot can be seen and understood.  The events in life outside of self keep happening, faster and more furious and intense than ever these days.  And on the other hand, waiting becomes a new skill to be developed.  Waiting to recover from an illness that hits, waiting for permission to cross a border, waiting for an appointment with a healer, waiting in every kind of line.  And in the midst of that, there are activities that keep swirling and one finds it is useful to have practiced how to go to the center of the storm. Because we are led to believe that life is about all the doing, decades have been spent finding one's place in the doings of the world.  Little attention given to being.

But when time comes - and it always does - to slow the doing, one finds that all the sadness and struggle in the world must be encountered to get to that quiet center of being.  There, even more depth of understanding about one's purpose can be revealed.  It is a place that allows for "engaged rest" and in this place, it becomes important to recognize that so much of life is about the waiting.

We do this without appreciating the value of having this quality rise and it often brings cultivation of patience, silence, yielding to the universe to guide whatever is left in the doing world.  It is a great big "thank you" that is being held in the waiting.