Waiting on Everything
Diamond Warren-Tucker
aug 2020
Oftentimes, it feels as though we are waiting for something. Waiting in line for the next available cashier; waiting for love; waiting for a friend; waiting for the new year to adopt new habits and drop bad ones. It is as though we were conditioned to be in waiting our whole lives. There have been times where I have been told that “all good things come to those that wait” but I have never been told that if you wait for too long, those good things never come.
I have found that out on my own.
There is a peace that I believe people find in waiting, but doing so gives others the chance to snatch up the very thing that you were waiting on.
If you do not wait, you are naive.
If you do not wait, you are settling.
If you do not wait, you are impatient.
I am impatient.
The only things that people should wait on, are the things that they cannot control. This cannot be. There is a world that exists entirely outside of waiting, one that human beings are afraid to explore because it goes against our principles.
Right?
You cannot tell the thunder to stop thundering or the sun to stop shining.
You cannot control the day you were born or the day that you die.
You cannot control the thoughts that others have about you.
You cannot control the revolution that you started.
You cannot control the ideas that you have birthed into this world.
But if we are waiting on the things we cannot control, wouldn’t that mean we are waiting on life?
Wouldn’t that mean we are waiting on everything?
Wouldn’t that mean that waiting is necessary?
Wouldn’t that mean wa—
Stop.
To wait is to make sense of the nonsensical.
To wait is to be nestled in insanity.
To wait is to be inconsolable.
To wait...
Besides ourselves and the work that we produce, we cannot control anything. Waiting is not a choice.
Yes.
No.
Waiting is indecisive.
Waiting is anxiety.
Waiting is tragedy.
Waiting is tradition.
Why wait for the world to end when we could end it ourselves?
Why wait to move on, when you can pack up and run now?
Why wait?
Why wait?
Wait...wait...WAIT!
No.
I wait because I have been told to wait. I wait because all I have known is wait. I wait because God wants me to wait. The Second Coming. I wait because it is right.
No.
I am impatient.
Waiting means that life is passing me by.
Waiting means that I am passing me by.
Waiting means that I am living outside of myself.
I no longer want to live outside of myself.
I no longer want to transcend and become what my family,
my friends,
my traditions,
want me to become.
I am beside myself.
Before I started writing this, I had this idea that if I waited long enough, it would be easier to write this reflection. I was waiting. This is a product of me abolishing my waiting. This was supposed to be an analysis of someone else’s poem. Instead this is my poem. My broken thoughts are now broken thoughts on your paper; thoughts that I can no longer control.
How should we live a good life?
This is my answer.
These are my terms.
Waiting is inactive and I am an active being.
I was waiting for this to make sense. In my waiting, I have found something else entirely.