It’s just after dusk on a beautiful summer evening; the sky is a fantastic lilac. You are meeting some loved ones for dinner and you’ve just stepped into the restaurant. You hear someone call out your name, you twist, and smile as you join your friends at their table. You share hellos and order your food before diving into a proper catch-up. Some time passes. You laugh and tease and reminisce. More time passes. You check your phone. Of course you are happy to be with your friends, and chatting with them is lovely, but you did come expecting to eat. Your stomach will begin to make very loud, very noticeable noises soon. How long have you been waiting? Didn’t you order your food like thirty five minutes ago? What could possibly be taking so long? Your thoughts are interrupted by the return of your 5:30 p.m. coffee and you excuse yourself from the table. For a moment your focus is pulled away from your empty stomach. When you return from the bathroom you are delighted to find that your food has finally arrived. Thank goodness! Fajitas here we come!
Fajitas are fantastic, but have no real effect on the metaphor I am attempting to craft, you can replace them with summer rolls if you prefer. Has this ever happened to you? You are deeply focused on your food and when it will arrive, but when you excuse yourself to use the toilet or answer a call or check on the dogsitter, you return to find that your food has been waiting for you. It’s happened to me enough that it’s become a running joke in my family. When I am at lunch or dinner with my parents and we grow impatient waiting for our food, my mom will often suggest, “go to the bathroom quickly,” as if I will magically trigger the arrival of her meal.
I felt the exact same way trying to find the right topic for today’s journal. For whatever reason, new and incredible creative ideas come to me when I run. In the middle of a difficult physical activity, where all I should really do is focus on putting one foot in front of the next, my mind begins to work. It’s like my legs move my thoughts as much as they move my body. When I get home I have to rush to write my ideas down before they disappear (while trying to avoid dripping sweat onto my notepad, ew). This week I am a little under the weather, and in an attempt to stop my sniffles from developing into a full blown cold, I am choosing to walk instead of run. It’s Thursday and I have a writing deadline to hit - so I went for a walk this morning specifically to get an idea, a hook, for Jeremy’s Journal. Somehow my legs didn’t move fast enough to get my ideas going. I was eager and expectant, I was waiting for an idea to hit me like it usually does mid-run. And of course I couldn’t think of a damn thing. I tried singing in my head. I tried focussing on the world around me instead of the world in my head. That’s when I remembered my mom and her joke about going to the bathroom to make our food arrive faster.
It’s easy for me to lock my focus on a meal, especially when I’m hungry. I get agitated and fidgety when I’m waiting on my plate to arrive and it seems like the kitchen has forgotten about me. When I go to the restaurant bathroom, for a moment my focus isn’t on my food or my hunger. I have something else to do; even when I go specifically to trigger the magical arrival of my supper. I check my phone, I try to figure out the strange gesture controlled tap, I judge the interior design choices. There’s something to distract me for a second, and somehow that alleviates the pressure of what I am waiting for. Sometimes my food arrives while I’m evaluating the pattern on the bathroom tiles, but even if it doesn’t, I have something to tell my parents, a minuscule distraction from our hunger.
You may argue that I’m just putting a new spin on the old saying a watched pot never boils. There is an element of that in my strange new metaphor, but I think there is something new as well, a little self awareness. I know that when my mom jokes that I should go to the bathroom, my leaving won’t send some secret message to the waiter that they should bring my food. But I secretly acknowledge: perhaps letting go of my all-encompassing expectancy for a moment and allowing myself the freedom to wonder may quicken the gratification of my expectation, not because of some magical rule, but because it gives me permission to be distracted. Or better yet, at peace.
Ahh, peace! Now you must sense that this philosophy is best applied, perhaps, outside of the restaurant. My relentless, anxious, highly focussed expectations have sometimes robbed me of peace. Instead of asking, “when will my pizza be here?” I have asked much bigger questions. When will I graduate high school? When will I get a car? When will I fall in love? Get a job? Get a better job? Have enough? Be happy? When will it be my turn? These are important questions and I have sat with all of them, I still wrestle with some of them today! I have sat at the table, confused and hungry, beginning to wonder if I will ever get what I want. In the wanting and the waiting, I have grown frustrated. I know that walking away for a moment won’t bring me what I want, but it might just bring me a little peace. After all, when I go to the bathroom, I don’t forget that I am in a restaurant having dinner with my family, I only shift my focus for a while.
I don’t want to undermine the real anguish we feel in the waiting; for answers, for opportunities, for breakthrough. And I believe in diligence. But when I look back at times in my life when I grew hungry and despondent in the waiting, I wish I had given myself a little grace. Perhaps taking a short pause from the pressure would have brought me a little peace. That’s how I want to move forward. I’ll share with you: I’m waiting on the right job opportunity at the moment. It’s easy to get swept up in disappointment or doubt but I want to give myself the opportunity to be excused from the table for a few minutes. Who knows what could be waiting for me when I get back?