I was prepared for quite a bit of waiting when I accompanied Lynn to her one day art class in Dodgeville. Then, yesterday, I went to get a haircut. One of the hairdressers told me I would have to wait 30 minutes before anyone could work on me. I sat in the waiting chairs. I like to practice staying alert and not urging the clock to go faster. It is good Bhuddist work, related to meditation and being conscious of what I am doing with my mind. While waiting, I saw a 20-something man ask a hairdresser, with a pained and anxious look on his face, "How long is the wait?" He looked as though he was asking "How long will I be tortured?"
I know that Americans are famous for disliking and fearing having to wait - for anything. Everything should be available NOW and if not, forget it! One thing that covid has done is increase the number of places one has to wait.
I know there are all sorts of odd books available these days and I had just read about Bart (bart.google.com), Google's new chatbot that is said to be their attempt to compete with the much-talked about ChatGPT. As I have said, I like to treat the Google search as though it is a wise, well-read chat bot and have Google search out answers to questions, odd ones as well as standard ones. t.ly/1sh_r (short link to Google search "how to wait") I was impressed that "how to wait" received 3.9 Billion responses.
The format of a Google search result includes questions others have asked related to the main search. Often, the related questions broaden my thinking and my ideas about my search. One aspect of waiting I had not considered was the wait in some Christianity for Jesus to return. The novel by Tom Perrotta "The Leftovers" explores the impact of the Rapture when some Christians are taken up to Heaven while many other people, often assuming they are models of the right way to be, find that others are "missing" while they themselves are not. They are puzzled and depressed.
