Waiting

Waiting has not been my strong point.  I was quite eager for Christmas, for snow, for the snow to melt, for everything.  It was a shocker to me to see Adam Sadler's "Click".  He gets a universal remote that does it all and that does not turn out so well.  I became persuaded all over again that the good and the boring come all mixed together in this life and that taking my wife's advice to develop some patience is a good idea.  I haven't progressed much but I am interested.

I see that deciding that something or someone is boring is something I am doing and I am working on increasing the speed and power of my ability to delve more deeply into something boring and find the non-boring parts.

I can see that much of my life involves waiting and I am focusing on that.  Stroebel's Quieting Reflex is something that I have pretty well trained into myself.  When the other end of the phone line is ringing, while waiting for a green light, while dealing with a few spare seconds on my hands, I relax all the tension I can find in myself.  It is fun and enriching to relax those muscles.  Waiting can be rich.

Steven Wright says that he likes to go into a doctor's or dentist's waiting room and wait.  He has no appointment and he doesn't even know what sort of physician has that office.  He is just waiting there.

A Zen story tells of some people who saw a monk standing atop a hill.  They speculated on what he was doing.  Waiting for someone?  Praying?  Meditating?  Finally, they approached the man and asked what he was doing.  He said he was standing there.  Are you waiting?  No.  Are you praying?  No, just standing here.  The questions that pop up help us see into ourselves.  How long will this go on?  Why just stand here like this?  Answers may or may not be forth coming.  We may just have to wait.