Waiting Room
The last time I was in a waiting room, I didn’t have anything to do. The horror! I had my phone, but I had no emails to answer, no phone calls to make. I didn’t care to look at social media. I brought a notebook but I knew I likely wouldn’t use it. The writer brain never really shuts off, but you’re not always in the right headspace for the projects at hand. This is what needed fixing. It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t have anything to do. I purposely didn’t bring anything.
Instead, I watched a little daytime TV, which made me feel a little queasy as if I’d just eaten a whole bag of chips. Then I ran through a range of emotions. I panicked that I didn’t bring my laptop. I regretted not bringing my book club book, even though I knew the subject of the book, death by disease, was nothing that I wanted to read in a hospital waiting room. I made myself dizzy with my swirling thoughts. I went outside and walked in circles in the parking lot and then came back to the waiting room. I obsessively watched the weather radar on my phone, anticipating the rain that was coming. When it started raining, I watched it from a window. And finally my mind settled.
Even at that, a couple times I startled myself and was about to get up and say something like, “Well, it’s time to get to…” or “Well, I’d better go and…” but I couldn’t finish those sentences. There was no place else I needed to be, nothing to get to. And it was like the feeling of rolling over in bed knowing you can rest a little longer. It was a release. This was everything I needed to do today. So I watched the rain, and slowly allowed my brain waves to untangle and pursue ideas again.
We’ve all heard, “Patience is a virtue.” Searching online you can find out there are 52 virtues, others say 56 of them, that there are 13 main ones, 12 in the Bible, seven “important” virtues, and that other virtues include enthusiasm, love, joy, peace, self-control, gentleness… And it all boils down to: Virtues are the building blocks of good character.
Patience is one of those things you have to practice. I’m not sure that anyone’s naturally good at it. As kids we’re taught we have to be patient to go play with our friends, for summer vacation, for cookies to cool… Patience means putting off all the things you really want. Teenagers aren’t patient. I think that’s a law somewhere. Patience might be something only adults can start to grapple. In fact, “grappling” seems to be part of the problem. I’ve always figured all things can happen on my time if I just nudge them along. But patience seems to require a letting go. Relinquishing. Allowing. Making room.
I once inherited a picture. By inherited, I mean a roommate left it behind for months before coming back to retrieve it. I vaguely remember the picture but tucked in the corner of it was a typed scrap of paper, laminated, that said: For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe. The Internet says it was coined by the late Larry Eisenberg, science fiction writer and biomedical engineer. I used to walk by it in the house, telling this quote to mind its own business. But it popped into my head as I sat in the waiting room, and this time I let myself admit that Mr. Eisenberg has a point. I thought of all sorts of outward things I can’t control: Medicine, the weather, catchy songs with bad rhymes, the misuse of apostrophes, the saturated fat content of cheese, the way I concentrate on keeping the plane aloft when I fly (you’re welcome, by the way, to all the passengers sitting near me)… And one after the other, I watched myself let these thoughts go. Once I freed up some space, the writer brain came back online. An internal shift was taking place and I was climbing back in the driver’s seat of my own life. It all came together quickly once I gave myself the room to wait.
