Life Is Really Just Waiting

It starts early.

As children, we think life consists of big events. Christmas Eve. The summer holidays. Birthdays. New Year's Eve. Everything else is just the grey space between the important things.

I remember the first time I really waited for something.

It was New Year's Eve, and I'd been allowed to stay awake until midnight. Just the thought of it felt almost illegal. Imagine being allowed to stay up when the grown-ups were supposed to take over the world. I spent the whole evening staring out of the window while darkness lay across the neighbourhood like a secret blanket. Soon the sky would explode with colour. Soon something would happen.

I waited as hard as I could.

Then I fell asleep at around ten o'clock.

It may well be the most accurate metaphor for human life that I know.

Because life is really just waiting.

We wait for trains.

For replies.

For money.

For coffee.

For summer.

For motivation.

For messages that never arrive.

For messages that arrive far too quickly.

For better times.

For life to "properly begin."

And the strange thing is that you never really graduate from waiting. You just upgrade the categories.

Children wait for Saturday sweets.

Adults wait for payday.

There's considerably less fireworks involved.

I think that's why waiting for money feels so heavy. Not only because you need it, but because adult life somehow seems to be built around numbers that are on their way somewhere, but never quite there yet.

"The money should arrive sometime this week."

A sentence capable of ruining your sleep, your mood and your blood pressure all at once.

Even so, many of us carry around another kind of waiting in the background:

the irrational dream of winning the lottery.

It's fascinating how grown adults can be financially sensible and completely delusional at exactly the same time.

"No, you have to be responsible with money."

...throws £5 at a mathematical hallucination.

But perhaps waiting isn't just frustration. Perhaps it's also a kind of life skill.

When I know I have to wait, I usually slow down. Have a coffee. Watch people. Write a little. Update a half-finished piece of text I've already been moving around for three months. Waiting is actually surprisingly liveable once you accept it.

It's the waiting you didn't choose that drains the soul.

Especially public transport.

Few things trigger such an immediate existential collapse as red letters on a departure board. Bare minutes that suddenly become twenty-four. Small delays spreading through the day like falling dominoes.

Especially if you have another connection to catch afterwards.

That's when your brain starts calculating like a desperate stockbroker.

"If the train is only six minutes late, I can still catch the bus if Platform B isn't too far away and nobody elderly walks in front of me on the escalator."

It's remarkable how quickly modern human beings transform from civilised individuals into panicked gazelles wearing backpacks.

And then there are the telephone systems.

Those digital abysses where time itself ceases to exist.

"You are number 47 in the queue."

No, thank you.

If someone wants that much of my life, I should at least be allowed to send them an invoice.

The fascinating thing is that queueing systems always pretend they're doing you a favour.

Soft jazz plays while a synthetic voice gently explains that "your call is important to us," all while you age biologically in real time.

I'm convinced some people died while waiting for customer service and are still officially listed as "estimated waiting time: approximately five minutes."

But nowhere captures human waiting better than an airport.

Airports are modern purgatory.

You arrive carrying anxiety. Then comes frustration. Then you're gradually stripped, scanned and relieved of your dignity at security. Afterwards follows a period of aimless wandering beneath artificial lights while paying £9 for a yoghurt and a bottle of water.

Eventually, a brief moment of peace appears.

Then the stress returns.

Along with the hunger.

Airports may be the only places on earth where fully grown adults collectively accept sitting on the floor next to a power socket while eating dry focaccia and staring blankly into space.

And yet there's something strangely human about it.

Because we keep waiting.

Not just for planes.

But for things we hope might change us a little once they arrive.

Perhaps that's why I still catch myself waiting for life to begin, a little bit every day.

The only difference is that I'm no longer in such a hurry.

As a child, I wanted life to start immediately. Everything had to happen now. Now. Now.

But perhaps, as the years pass, you learn that tomorrow arrives whether you keep demanding it or not.

So you sit a little more quietly.

Have a coffee.

Look out of the window.

Write a few lines.

Wait for something you can't quite explain.

And perhaps that is life after all.

Not the great moments when fireworks burst across the sky.

But all the waiting before you fall asleep.