“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
-John Milton from “On His Blindness”
A child observed frankly, “When it’s cold, we want it to be hot, and when it’s hot we want it to be cold.” How true it is. Without conscious effort, we can find ourselves frustrated by the chill of winter and despairing in the heat of summer.
The human condition can seem to be one of constant waiting, always some condition lacking or wanting, unattained. For many of these conditions—like the temperature—all we have to do is wait, and the season will change. Whether or not we choose to wait, the condition will change through the passage of time. Our waiting can be calm and quiet or frenzied.
People who want desperately to have children can distress themselves with anxiety waiting for them. Just as suddenly, they can be overwhelmed and despairing once they have them. Many a mother whiles away the years musing that once someone is independent or there is more sleep or they’ve gone to school or you’ve found the right activity, then there will be peace.
That peace can then just as easily be shattered when the children leave home in adulthood and the parents are left to themselves.
Andrew Lang’s “The Orange Fairy Book,” in the “Tale of the White Slipper” includes a marvelous description of waiting. When the king loses his medicinal slipper in the currents of the river, many go diving to recover it. Gilguerillo, who desires to marry the king’s daughter, tries diligently to recover the slipper, but does not succeed. Rather than grow discouraged, Gilguerillo displays patience and through learning discovers how to make a new white slipper.
There is an old proverb which says: ‘Everything comes to him who knows how to wait.’ It is not all men who know how to wait, any more than it is all men who can learn by experience; but Gilguerillo was one of the few, and instead of thinking his life wasted because he could not have the thing he wanted most, he tried to busy himself in other directions. So, one day, when he expected it least, his reward came to him.
The art of waiting well is one that will serve us, no matter our circumstances.
