Friday, December 12, 2008

Heavy Weight of Waiting

December 12, 2008

I’m bored. For me, boredom is the state of wanting something but not knowing what it is I want or I’m waiting. Waiting is hard, sometimes. Other times it is so very easy to do. I could wait forever for a dentist appointment. I would have preferred to wait for my father’s funeral. Interesting, isn’t it that most of the time you think of waiting you think of the time of anticipation before a happy event, or getting something done you want to get done, but that’s my perspective of life and I’m one of those disgustingly upbeat people who believes that there is something good just around the corner. Even when it seems that I’ve incurred the wrath of evil, I honestly believe that from sadness happiness can come, that from death comes life and I’ve thought that since I was young. Still, I don’t like waiting, I’d just as soon pass the bad parts and skip to the good ones, until I really think about it – then I wouldn’t trade those rotten stinking moments that seem to scar my very soul for all the happiness in the world.

It would be like reading the last chapter of a book, the meaning of the story was in the 150 or so pages before the last 10 – it might be the “best” part of the book – but it means nothing without time invested. I just finished reading a book my eldest daughter thrust at me saying, “I think you’ll like it.” She was right. But, I didn’t like all of it. I admit – I skimmed over one part of it because my eyes started to glaze over – that part bored me and I was unwilling to wait longer than needed to get to the interesting parts, again. I think that’s what we do when we’re bored, we skim through life paying just enough attention to make sure we don’t miss something important, but we’re unwilling to invest ourselves completely until life gets interesting, again. What would happen if we invested ourselves even when life feels humdrum?

I know there have been times in my life when I had to go to a party or some family function when I really didn’t feel like getting out of bed or leaving the house, as sad as this sounds I didn’t feel like investing the energy to have fun. I simply wasn’t in a “fun” mood for one reason or another. But, because I hate letting people down I do it anyway and inevitably – I enjoy myself. I learned and now, when I am feeling bored I look for something different to try or I write. For example, I honestly was bored when I started writing this and I’m not anymore. I forced myself to sit down and start writing because I knew that eventually I would start to enjoy myself. I’ve tried many new things because of boredom – because while I’m waiting I search and when I’m really bored I don’t care if I fail at what I try because I’m just too bored to care. I might be skimming through life but my eyes and mind are open a bit wider and it seems I’m willing to invest a bit more of myself to alleviate my soul of the heavy weight of waiting.

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