“What is delayed is not lost.”
Here we are, The Waiting Place. Well that is a hard one to swallow. I have been battling this in my mind for the last 6 months, hoping it was not true. Hoping there would be a change of heart and we would just go. Hoping for an opportunity to sail this season, and yet it is not to be.
Why? Why is this having such a profound effect on me? Is it because I have spent the last six years planning for this sailing adventure. Is it the thought I made the biggest financial mistake of my life. Am I afraid of failure. Is it the worry that if we don’t go now it won’t happen. Maybe the even greater fear that in the year to come something will prevent us from going? Are we losing the ideal age for the boys? Will the home schooling become too hard? Will they no longer want to be with their parents but rather their friends. Will the boat develop problems as it sits? The worries are constant.
I have always been a very goal orientated person. Without a goal I am often lost. I subscribed to the “Set a Date” plan, I followed it through. I put in literally tens of thousands of hours reading, researching, planing and acting. Our two months on the boat last year was a dream. We proved to ourselves and the family as a whole, that this is something we were capable of doing, for a few years and greatly enjoying.
I’m ready, the boat is ready as it can be. The idea of spending more time at work away from the family just for monetary gain no longer appeals. The contracts I’m currently on don’t fly much, flying is something I greatly enjoy. Work is currently a place to sit, consumed by ones thoughts. Tick tock, tick tock.
Nina has made such great sacrifices for me and the family. There were many days she has spent while I’m away pursuing my career goals. The sacrifices to her own career to raise the boys. We have to give her this time. She has earned it ten times over and she will be in a much better place on our return.
So we wait, and we dream
“The Waiting Place” Dr Seuss
What exactly is this place that most of us would prefer to avoid? When we want something to happen but that something won’t happen for a while, or even ever, it is uncomfortable and anxiety inducing. It is to be here, but wanting more than anything to be there.
Waiting, at its worst, is a rejection of the present. The problem, of course, is that we cannot actually reject the present. We are stuck, and no amount of lamentation or grumpiness or staring at the post slot will untether us from the present. Dr Seuss refers to the old saying “A watched pot never boils.” We are all familiar with the fact that this is not technically true, a watched pot will boil, but it will feel slower and more agonizing than the unwatched pot. The hidden profundity in this saying is that to stare at water, willing it to boil sooner is to fixate on an absence. It is to devote all of our energy to emptiness. It is to narrow our field of vision to a single thing that isn’t there. And if we have narrowed our vision to something that isn’t there, then we are seeing nothing. And that is why it is so uncomfortable, because to anxiously and single- mindedly wait is to devote ourselves to nothing.
Dr Seuss describes this as the waiting place. The picture he paints is of a sort of suspended animation, where the focus is on what is not. It is place where we cannot do anything and cannot leave. We seem to be utterly powerless, dependent on some external force to free us, God or a phone call or the rain or another chance. We have deposited all of our capacity to act on the other side of some uncontrollable event.
Probably the worst part of the waiting place for me is that we are there alone. We dwell on our emotional state to such a degree it can consume us. We become it. We question and doubt ourselves. We blame and shame ourselves. We undermine our capacity to act.
To wait usefully is to be awake, and not to reject either the present or the future. It requires being in a conversation between our current selves and future selves, not letting either lapse into a monologue.
And if you are dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left. Will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
The above section is from Clay Nelson