What Are You Waiting For?

I once came up with what I thought was a great title for a book I’ll never write:

“Waiting for Life to Happen.”

I’m pretty sure it would be a bestseller, because it seems like a lot of us suffer from the waiting disease.

We’re waiting for the right opportunity.

The right person.

The right time.

The right break.

And we don’t necessarily wait with the patience of Job.

We wait more like the Energizer Bunny . . . constantly moving in circles while secretly waiting for something else to happen.

Then one day, The Grasshopper gave me one of those little insights that stopped me cold:

Waiting produces more waiting.

And I started wondering: What are we spending all our time waiting for?

Maybe we're not really waiting for life to happen . . . maybe we’re waiting for our preferred slice of life.

The part where everything finally falls into place.

The part where we get discovered.

The part where we win the lottery.

The part where something happens that makes all this waiting worthwhile.

But meanwhile . . . life is happening.

All the time. And we're missing the aliveness of life.

And the thing we’re waiting for may have very little chance of happening.

I think the silent agenda of the waiter often sounds something like:

“I’ll do this until what I really want comes along.”

Here’s the problem with that:

It may not be coming along.

And waiting can become a pattern.

Start.

Stop.

Start.

Stop.

A little like a New York City bus . . . you get a head of steam going for a block, and then . . . screech . . . stop.

Then you start all over again.

Don't get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with pausing, reflecting, or taking some time to yourself.

But there’s a big difference between taking a pause and putting your life on pause.

And maybe that’s where the answer is hiding.

Because if waiting produces more waiting, what produces something different?

Doing.

Doing is the cure for waiting.

And the interesting thing about doing is that it isn’t somewhere down the road.

It’s not on a waiting list.

It’s available right now.

You don’t have to wait for doing to show up.

You just have to do something.

So . . . if you’ve been waiting for life to happen, you might want to reconsider the wait.

Because waiting produces more waiting.

and Doing produces more life.

So, What are you waiting for?

All the best,

John