Waiting

I went on a short work-related trip to Berlin recently. It was my first time visiting that city and my stay, albeit very short, was a lovely one, filled with the kindness of people. The flight took just one hour and twenty minutes, but to get on the plane required turning up much earlier and waiting. As always, the flight was delayed by the predictable "delay to the incoming flight", so a short eighty-minute journey took five hours out of the day.

Airports are not the worst place to wait. It is easy to sit there, and pay attention, to what is going on inside us and to what is going on around. The truth of human life is that we must spend quite a bit of time waiting. Not just on the physical level. At a deeper level we are all waiting for something or someone. For a possibility of healing, of a real contact, of meeting without pretence or the need to hide behind masks. These possibilities, large and small, await us — at the end of a journey, in a new relationship, in a change in how we are dealing with our life in this world. Sure, we all are anxious to get to our arrivals. But often we are in an in-between place, still in our waiting, and we have to have the courage not to go anywhere except the places where our lives are now, places we occupy until real contentment comes.

While waiting it can be a temptation to fill our lives with whatever we can to rob time of its tediousness. We can be afraid of being just with ourselves, in-between. We rush to fill the gap by doing too much, by not staying still. But when stillness comes our way – we can find it in an airport, in the slow reading of a good novel, in a quiet walk or in our sitting practice - it allows us to stay and taste the richness of the present moment as it opens our hearts to the inner beauty of life. A beauty as simple as having a glass of strange-coloured local beer in a square under the trees, which gave a sense of connection; it eased and gave meaning to the larger waits of life.