Are You Stuck in an Existential Waiting Room?

There’s nothing quite like it; a waiting room.

It’s a dimension all on it’s own. Pale walls, sterile atmosphere, this subtle yet deafening hum of silence. You can feel people breathe. Printers are beeping. There’s an abacus in one corner. Plastic seating lines the perimeter. Water fountains serve no other purpose than to provide wet stagnation. A receptionist who, by rights, should be relabelled as the Head Waiter, the gatekeeper, she smiles methodically. And then there are the clocks — or are they bombs? — ticking by indefinitely, leading up to this uncertain unknown.

Whatever it is you’re in there waiting for, it’s paradoxical. You so desperately want the waiting to end, but also; you don’t. Because what happens then?

What are we waiting for?

The “Waiting Room” Mindset

I first encountered this term whilst blissfully reading through the Oh magazine, issue 56. Page 97 presented a brief, yet blindingly reflective “oh moment,” which they coined as the Waiting Room mindset.

“Feeling that the stuff of our everydays is inconsequential. We hold out for those monumental moments and transformative events, and when we do that, we miss it: the marrow of life, and the living of it.”

We’re all guilty of it.

Allowing ourselves to blindly navigate through each day of our life on autopilot, blinkers on, traipsing towards an arbitrary finish line that is around a bend we cannot see. We think that if we wait around patiently enough, if we linger in our seats, only glancing up when the door dings or when somebody coughs a little too loud, then hopefully, eventually our name will be called and Something Exciting Will Happen.

But our name doesn’t get called. Because Life doesn’t exist behind a closed white door, beckoning us in whenever it’s ready. Life is the waiting room. It’s the whole damn building. It’s the carpets and the central heating and the pamphlets advocating the importance of condoms. It’s there in your jiggling feet, your sweaty palms, your erratic breathing. Life is happening there and everywhere and now.

From a Waiting Room to a Living Room

You see, we often perceive the future as the Making of Us, as opposed to a further collection of Monday’s to Sunday’s. Because that’s all they are. The unfolding of time, much like today, much like now, just a little further down the line. And yet here we are, in the now, pining for the soon. But what makes it any different?

We forget that our entire life story is not just the synopsis, the shortened summary of the most enthralling events. Our lives are comprised of every page throughout, every chapter, every word, every day of our existence — even the seemingly mundane ones.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard.

We are what we eat. What we watch. Who we chat with. Where we wander. Why we do this and when we do that. We are the compilation of every moment ever, including the ones in which we’re just sitting around waiting.

If we continue to do that, if we seek only the Big Moments and let them supersede all the rest, then the majority of our lives will be spent in that waiting room, in which day and night and life will continue to unfold outside of it. Sure, behind one door might lie the wedding of our dreams. Behind another; our dream job. Several others might contain a variety of our other dreams, the wildest, the weirdest, possibly even a couple nightmares. But once they’re over, then what? We traipse back out into the waiting room and go….where? What happens then?

More waiting.

Unless we stop waiting — and start living.

“Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love.” — Bradley Whitford.

Use the small moments, the everyday hours, the “inconsequential” instances and live in them. Don’t just wait them out. Find the good in everything that’s around you. Stop sitting around in the hopes that something, soon, will happen. Start making them happen. Make the most of the things that are already happening. Don’t waste a second. Be patient, but don’t be on pause.

We often confuse the two, you see. But waiting around is not patience — it’s halting altogether. Patience is not ignoring the “boring” moments, it’s how we utilise them. It’s us, striding forward whilst knowing that our steps might not be large, but at least they’re moving. So stop waiting. Start living. You know this. We all do.

We just need a little reminder from time to time.

Don’t Wait A Minute Longer

So maybe this is that. A reminder.

Maybe this is the receptionist poking her head out from behind her computer, calling your name and shooing you away. “The waiting room is closing now,” she announces and hurries you out of there. She slams the door shut behind you, leaving you exposed to the cool air of the Rest of Your Entire Life.

Huh, you think, breathing deep. It feels kind of nice.

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Oh hey, whilst you’re here: why not put the “em” into your “emails” and lob your name onto my mailing list for weekly em-bellishments on my rose-tinted, crumb-coated lens of life. It’s the equivalent of the reduced section in the supermarket (low value Weird Crap™ that you didn’t know you needed).