I wonder if we truly know the taste of such a mystery as waiting. Often, waiting is only thought as idle inaction and the world never does that. We often pass the time from one minute to another with much activity. Waiting for a download, waiting for something to heat in the microwave, waiting to arrive in your destination—all these are filled with other activities in between. Maybe because of the dominance of efficiency, the most important thing about waiting is time and not to waste it. But when our only focus is counting down the hours or days till we finish, we lose sight of the mystery that is passing by and is actually inhabiting the time.
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Proceeding from one stage of life to another is also a waiting. We may not be as much aware of that because of its eventfulness but the progress of life from one phase to the next is marked by a change that nevertheless passes through a period wherein we wait. From student life to work life, for example, there is a waiting, because who we are as a student is not yet ready to become who we are as a worker. We need to wait with nature, to physically grow; wait with our intelligence, to learn what we did not know before; wait with our maturity to be prepared in our heart and soul.
Certainly, this particular progress is filled with tasks to do but there is a factor that is not within our control, unlike how, in a way, we can control how much or how fast we study. All through such stage, there is a part that needs to happen but it does not come from us—that is the mystery. And so our place is to wait, which is the proper attitude towards such mystery in our midst.
In the end, waiting is more than just about time. It is a welcoming and accommodating of a mystery. It may be lived as a weighing of considerations and questions, or a striving towards an inner disposition. It is making a home for that mystery, something that was not present before but is on its way, and maybe is already there and yet gradually. And time is but where we are as we go through all this waiting.
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