{"id":61,"date":"2014-07-24T10:09:11","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T17:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sombermoose.com\/?p=61"},"modified":"2025-09-08T10:10:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T17:10:46","slug":"waiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/2014\/07\/24\/waiting\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waiting is one of those inevitable states of existence to which we give very little thought, at least during those times when we are not<\/em>waiting. We wait in many different situations: at stop lights, in lines at the store, for a phone call that is expected at a certain time, or as I am now, for an oil change to be finished.
\nWaiting has different weights, hominymic pun not intended. Waiting for news of someone undergoing surgery feels very different than waiting at a stop light, unless of course that stop light is between you and the person undergoing surgery. Waiting for your turn at the doctor’s office for a routine exam, waiting at the DMV, or waiting for the arrival of a traveling friend, all have a different feel.
\nThere are a number of things that can affect the feel of waiting: whether the outcome of the wait is known or unknown; whether the wait was expected or unexpected; the comfort level of the place where you are waiting; whether the length of time you will be waiting is knowable; all of these factors, and other factors as well, can affect your wait.
\nSo how does one manage a wait? I’ve been working on using meditation as a wait strategy. Time where action is stopped is available for mental excursions. I find that I have few opportunities for unstructured thinking, but waiting can provide that opportunity. Meditation and thought are good antidotes to one of the pitfalls of waiting, that pitfall being the frustration of forced inaction. When we were younger, we called this situation “boredom”. I now try to think of it as opportunity for thought. A period of waiting can be a period of freedom: freedom from the tyranny of a schedule, freedom from having to spend mental energy on trivial things, freedom from always having to be “active”.
\nI hope to learn how to make waiting something to appreciate’ to expand into, to feel as good about waiting as I feel about “doing something”. It’s all part of this life we live. Waiting is as inevitable as death and taxes, both of which are things for which we wait, though perhaps not anxiously. If waiting can become a time of fulfillment, our lives are guaranteed to be more full, for we will always have to wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waiting is one of those inevitable states of existence to which we give very little thought, at least during those times when we are notwaiting. We wait in many different situations: at stop lights, in lines at the store, for a phone call that is expected at a certain time, or as I am now, for an oil change to be finished. Waiting has different weights, hominymic pun not intended. Waiting for news of someone undergoing surgery feels very different than waiting at a stop light, unless of course that stop light is between you and the person undergoing surgery. Waiting for your turn at the doctor’s office for a routine exam, waiting at the DMV, or waiting for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1468,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}