Waiting – Larry Zelnick, PsyD
We all are accustomed to having to wait. How we wait often is a signifying characteristic. My mother tends to wait anxiously, needing to hear of our safe arrival before being able to resume her more typical equanimity. My son waits quietly, calmly, for most things. His patience often comes across as optimism and sometimes as sturdy confidence. But most important, his way of waiting affects those who wait with him. My son waits for others expecting their arrival; and he waits reassuringly with others to help them wait without undo worry.
Waiting is so mundane a human activity, that we experience it often without even noticing and without complaint. We wait in line to buy tickets to a new Broadway show. A hot ticket generates lines of excited followers who would wait faithfully and willingly for hours; that sacrifice of time of comfort the sacrifice feels like a gift, not a burden, for what awaits us is worth the wait.
We wait in anticipation of the arrival of a subway. I might even take the risk of leaning ever so carefully over the edge of the platform to catch a glimpse of the train’s headlight. It helps to be informed of periodic delays. Just knowing that the wait may be worse than one feared is often a comfort, but categorically different than airplane waiting, the anxiety born of mistrust and misbelief. Locked in our seatbelts, on hold between waiting, hoping for our plane’s turn for takeoff, or an unanticipated return to the gate where more waiting awaits us, often being kept in the dark is far worse than being suspended in the dark
We wait for people who keep us waiting so frequently that we end up relying on their lateness, even relying on the extra time afforded by their predicable unpredictability. Waiting is an expected part of the experience of making plans with such friends. My resentment only increases when caught by the other in my own lateness. “Ah, hah! Gotcha,” he proclaims with a smug self-righteousness, expecting a response of mutuality, “Yeah, we’re all late sometimes” he hopes I’m thinking. No. He doesn’t get it. His inability to hold me in mind and the persistent, repeated lack of recognition of my feelings has already led to a fragile scaffolding of self with this other. A relationship injury that can be difficult to ever repair.
We wait for people who have promised not to be too long, but they linger, we check our devices for the time — “on my way” they text. We think about recent experiences of the believability of such an update, recalibrating our internal psychic clocks. “It won’t be long now…” They have asked permission to secure a place in our minds, while we wait. They are holding us in mind.
We wait tenaciously for people we love, perhaps even more so when they have been elusive and resistant to our efforts to pursue them. In our hearts we fear they may be gone forever. We wait, sometimes not knowing for what or for whom we’re waiting. A variation of hide-and-seek, wait-and-seek highlights the interconnection and helplessness of both players. You never know who will come into your life, but you wait for their arrival, leaving yourself open to surprise. The one who seeks knows that there is someone who is pursuing; the one who is sought needs to wait to see how that will evolve …
We wait anxiously for people whose promises are unreliable and whose return is unlikely. We wait with building annoyance. If we can wait from within the spaces between patience and urgency, we are less likely to be injured.
What do you do while you’re waiting? Hope and second chances incubate while time is suspended. Do you imagine the arrival of the other, picture their entry, hear their apologetic voices, as if that’s all it will take? Do you imagine that you’ll be able to detect the anxiety of his rushing while you were waiting?
We wait as a ritual to maintain hope for a different outcome. Maybe this time …
Just you wait. Just you wait. You’ll see… And while you’re waiting, let yourself think about what it’s like for us to wait for you.
Children play pretend games in doll houses, toy castles, and in their imaginations. They spin stories of princes and princesses who find themselves captured with the fantasy of waiting for a miracle: “It was always meant to be,” says the sleeping one who waits from within a trance to be awakened and saved. But saved from what? Herewaiting might actually increase the likelihood of the miracle, as if this pause keeps wishes fresh, on ice, until the child is ready to understand their meaning. Yet some miracles can’t wait forever; they are best realized if the moment is seized. In this instance, we might think of a kind of an expiration date on some fantasies that are kept waiting too long. Children know that waiting can be the enemy of the magic that possibility opens.
What will it feel like if, after much waiting, you will see not even a hint of recognition of the pain of being kept waiting? Kids in foster care know this kind of waiting all too well.[1]
A teenage boy about whom I have come to know has had to accept the hurt of in consistent visits by his father on weekends; his parents divorced some years back and the visitation schedule is left in the hands of the father to arrange. In a now familiar scene, we notice the boy sitting in a darkened room, head close to the window, gazing longingly out from between the curtains, unwilling to surrender to the weight of disappointment.
Do you worry as you wait? Is he ok? Did something happen to delay him? Has he forgotten when we were supposed to meet, where to meet, or even that we were supposed to meet? How long do you wait before it feels like it’s too late? The too-muchness of the waiting has spoiled the connection that waiting had preserved.
When is it too late to wait any longer? Deadlines, or limitations on waiting preserve hope for a different result the next time.[2]
Sometimes, waiting can generate just the right amount of anticipation and rising excitement? I think I see him in the distance. Yes, that must be him. His image comes into focus as he approaches and my feelings amplify from “could that be,” to “it IS!”
Waiting can be what we ask of the other while we use their presence to figure things out. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me! I can get there if you give me some time.” “Wait for me, I’ll be right there. I promise I’ll remember. I know you’re at the window. I can imagine your eyes squinting to find me somewhere not too far away.”
“Wait, I’m not finished explaining. Give me some more time to explain. I’m not done yet. There’s a good reason for my delay. Please wait before giving up on my side of the story. I promise I’ll wait until you do.”
A man with whom I work, approaching 60, says he is waiting for his diagnosis. It’s bound to happen, he’s certain. It’s just a matter of time before fate makes itself known after making him wait. I wait before I speak, letting him examine my physical state for signs of what I might be waiting for.
Waiting is a special time, suspended between leaving and staying, when possibilities are considered, where connections can be imagined, and sometimes discarded, where different selves can linger together, and tolerate the other’s different capacities to wait without needing to know what they are waiting for.
Time heals all wounds the saying goes. Or is it some wounds? It can make room for new and unanticipated feelings and self states “Hey, wait. I didn’t see that part of you coming. That is you, isn’t it?” “Yes, I usually hold that part of myself in suspension; cautiously sizing up the potential for danger, waiting for a signal that warns me to be on guard with vigilant worry. As is often the fate of victims of trauma, waiting can emerge as a psychic lying in wait. Lurking cautiously at the margins of a painful past, assessing the risk for re-traumatization that might elicit the necessity to flee.
Some feelings can be affected, even transformed, by waiting – as palliative work. A determined, sick and pained body doesn’t wait for signals to answer the question. After years of fighting off debilitating injury from a boating accident, a man I know surrenders to the humiliation involved and decides he’s had enough. No more waiting. No more waiting? He and I engage each other in our own version of wait-and-seek. Though the stakes are unimaginable high, we seek out the toll his waiting has taken on his body and psyche.
What do I make of the intense engagement I feel each time we meet and each time we part.? He never keeps me waiting, reliable in his willingness to be found. What is he waiting for? An answer? To what question? For now, we wait, hoping for answers or for the recognition that there may be some discernable answers.
What am I waiting for?
[1] Gurion, M. 2013). Waiting to be found: papers on children in care. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 39, 253-256.
[2] Phillips, A. (2012) Waiting too long poisons desire, but waiting too little pre-empts it: the imagining is in the waiting. In Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. London:FSG.
Lawrence (Larry) Zelnick, PsyD is a graduate of NYU Postdoc. He served as Adjunct Associate Professor, Clinical Psychology Doctoral Psychology Program, Long Island University, Brooklyn, and on the Faculty, National Training Program, National Institute of the Psychotherapies, New York, NY.
Photo credit: Muhammad Lufty-Pexels