Today I have been thinking a lot about the concept of waiting. I have been in a waiting mode over the past few weeks. As I go through various job search processes, there’s a lot of waiting involved. You learn about a position, craft a cover letter, tweak your resume, upload to to a website or e-mail it to the prospective employer and hit send/submit. And then, you wait. How long you wait depends on where the employer is in the process, how important the job being filled is (as in there’s an urgency to getting it filled), how organized the employer is, how many people are involved in the process, etc. I applied for a job way back in early April that I never heard back from the people at all. For others I’ve received an almost immediate thanks but no thanks. It’s almost always true that a period of anywhere from two weeks to two months can elapse before a peep is heard.
Lately I’ve been involved in a job application process that has moved along fairly quickly…until recently when it has slowed down again, agonizingly slow. Of course, it could be that it hasn’t slowed down at all, but I’ve simply gotten increasingly anxious. This is not only possible, but likely. The closer it gets to a definitive answer, the more slowly it seems to go. So the companion to waiting is patience. I am working to cultivate a calm, patient attitude while waiting. So far it’s been hit or miss, but I’m holding the intention that I will wait calmly and patiently. This reminds me of a quote by Henry Van Dyke,
“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
Time definitely seems to drag when you’re waiting. The other statements feel true also. If I can remember to be in the present moment, then I know that the only time is now. I won’t get so hung up on the “wonder-what’s-going-to-happens” that I miss what’s happening right now. I’m grateful for the mindfulness meditation that I’ve been learning to practice. It’s giving me tools and language for dealing with the inevitable waiting that we all face. Some of our waiting isn’t a big deal: we order a meal at a restaurant and wait for it to be served or we wait in traffic. Some of our waiting carries more weight: we’ve applied for a job or for sent off college applications or took an exam and are waiting for the results. Then there’s the waiting to hear if a loved one has arrived safely to a destination or for a doctor to come out and tell us the progress of our friend who is in surgery.
We wait a lot. I want my waits to be filled with patience and equanimity, good humor and presence, rather than anxiety and fear, boredom and restlessness. I am grateful for my current waits–waiting to hear about some jobs that I applied for some time ago. Each step of the process has required some waiting. My approach has been to keep myself focused on just the next step rather than getting worked up anticipating all the what-ifs associated with what might happen three steps down the road. It’s worked pretty well for the most part. My mind is quite creative and talented at making up incredible stories about what’s happening while I am waiting, interpreting the silence as some doom that’s going to befall me. So my task is to gently work with my mind and not allowing myself to be carried away by the what-if stories and stick with what I know. This is all good practice.
What are you waiting for? How do you handle waiting?
