The Art of Waiting

I used to think waiting was just the boring part of life. The day between two important movements. The queue before the movie starts, the days before exam results, the 10 minutes before a friend arrives. I always wanted to skip it. If there was a button that could fast forward every waiting moment, I would have pressed without thinking twice.

But I don't think that anymore.

One memory keeps coming back to me. When I was around fourteen, my father was coming home after almost 3 weeks because of work. I remember standing near the balcony every 15 or 20 minutes, pretending I was not waiting. Every sound of a bike made me look outside. Every car flowing down felt like maybe this is him. My mother kept saying, "He will come when he comes" last few hours feel longer than the entire three weeks.

When you finally came home, I realised something strange. The happiness lasted may be 10 minutes. We hugged, we talked, we love over dinner and then everything slowly became normal again. But those hours of waiting... I still remember them years later. Funny how the journey stays in memory longer than the destination.

Maybe that's how Life works.

Even now, I am always waiting for something. Waiting for semester result. Waiting for internship replies. Waiting for weekends. Waiting for that one message from someone I don't even want to admit I was hoping would text first. It's all most embarrassing how much of life is spend refreshing in boxes and pretending we are "just checking".

I think about generation has become really bad at waiting.

Food arrives in 10 minutes. Movie start whenever we want. A package can reach the next day. If a web page takes more than 5 seconds to load I already feel irritated. We scroll through 15 second videos because even 1 minute feels to long. Somewhat in all this convenience quickly packed its bags and left.

I notice this while reading book store I often catch myself looking at how many pages are left instead of enjoying the chapter I am reading. Sometimes I even think "Can this author get to the point already?" Then I remember that some of my favourite story is very beautiful exactly because they took their time. You cannot Rush a good novel you cannot skip to the last page and expect to understand the characters.

Maybe people are like books too.

There was another Day data still remember for no special reason. I missed my bus after college. At first I was a not because another one would not come for almost 40 minutes. My first reaction was obviously to pick up my phone but the battery was almost dead so I kept it in my bag. For those 40 minutes, I simply sat there.

I was an old man feeding biscuits to stray dog. A little man was trying so hard to tie her so laces while her mother was without helping. Atiller new almost every regular customer by name. I had probably past that bus stop 100 times before, but I had never really seen it.

Maybe I was not waiting for the bus.

Maybe the bus was forcing me to slow down. There is a quote that I wrote in one of my notebooks month ago "Good things take time". It sounds simple almost childish but maybe that's why it's survive. Some truth don't need complicated words. I am still not good at waiting. I still check my email small times then necessary. I still become impatient when people say "We will let you know soon". I still count days on the calendar before something exciting happens. So no, I have not mastered this art. But I think I'm learning.