Life is what happens between the waiting.
My dog has developed a habit. He watches the door. When someone leaves—whether for the mail, the car, the garbage—he waits. And more often than not, he’s rewarded: They come back. Pretty quickly. It’s happened enough that he’s been trained. So now he waits.
Sometimes for hours. Time is a complicated thing— worthy of a very long, possibly boring book. One of the longest (and dullest) chapters might be: “The Expectation of Time.” Something is going to happen in the future. Sometimes you’re given a date. Sometimes you’re just told to wait… Almost poetic. But here’s the truth: Something is always happening. Between expectations, something always occurs. We isolate big moments—encapsulate them, make them matter— and then try to blank out the space in between.
Why? What if we could self-induce a coma? To skip the waiting? Toothache on Monday, root canal on Wednesday? Coma time. Cancer diagnosis, treatment, then results in three months? Coma time. Just fast-forward to the next “important” moment. The expectation of time reminds me of the old joke:
“Want to hear God laugh? Tell Him your plans.” We’re doomed at both ends.
We either: Make no plans between expected events, or Create elaborate plans for something that may never occur. Which is worse? And by worse, I mean— Which leads to an unhealthy way of living? It’s all so subjective. This is good. That is bad. We judge. But a conscious mind still makes decisions.
Those decisions are (ideally) based on knowledge, values, experience. Sometimes those things are connected. Sometimes they aren’t.
And isolating events in time doesn’t change time. Time is a river.
It flows. When we shut down between events— when we “wait”—
we remove ourselves from the river. Don’t do that.
You are not a dog.
A Work Progressing 