Waiting is an experience we all know – waiting in line in the bank, for the bus, for our friend to get ready. While learning to wait when needed is a helpful skill, there are many moments in our life where the habit of waiting acts against us and our wishes.
While working with clients using somatic bodywork, the experience of waiting is something I learned to recognize. Often personal struggles towards self-development have to do with past emotional trauma or childhood trauma and the experience of waiting might have been a part of it. Often a child is left waiting for something to be over with so that they can go on with their lives, but in the meantime, they are unable to act freely.
When I meet an adult client who lived this, the experience might still be very real in their body and their way of being. In times when they are not sure what they should do, they automatically enter into a mode of waiting; forgetting that they are not children anymore and that they can act and create a change, forgetting that waiting is often not the best option in front of them.
She entered to the hospital room, where her father was. There was an awful smell of antiseptic and medicine. The walls were white with grey spots and the sheets he slept on were the pale green color she hated so much. Fluorescent lights shone brightly from above, there was a chair nearby and an empty vase that was waiting for the fresh flowers her mother would bring.
His eyes were shut and his breathing was heavy. She sat there on the couch by his bed quietly, not wanting to disturb his sleep and bother him with her presence. She stared at the naked wall in front of her, waiting for an excuse to wake him up. Anything could work – a movement of his hand, something he might have said, a nurse that needed to take his temperature. But nobody entered and he was asleep with no reason for her to wake him just to say “Hi Dad, it’s me. I’ll fly tomorrow to the conference I told you about. I wanted to make sure I got to say goodbye”. Instead she waited for him to move from that faraway place he was in, to her.
It wasn’t new for her to wait. It also was not new for her to wait for him. It’s actually something she was good at – waiting. She did it from a very young age – waiting for them to come home, waiting for them to leave, waiting for something to start and waiting for it to end.
She could create a state of being, where hours would pass into the void of nothingness. Her eyes would stare to a point just in front of her, slightly above her head; her shoulders would drop and her hands would sit helplessly somewhere on her body, as if looking for some comfort. Her body would get into a state that was almost like being under natural anesthesia, no drugs involved and yet a very powerful and effective sensation of not feeling. In a matter of seconds, she was ‘gone’ into the place of waiting, where time could stand still and life was suspended. Her body would become numb and the endless emptiness would seem a bit more manageable.
After some 20 minutes of waiting beside his bed, her thoughts started sneaking in. “What exactly am I waiting for? What if death would come to kiss him before he wakes up? What is it that I think is so precious in his sleep that I should honor it?” She shook his hands gently and said softly “hi dad, it’s me’. His face lit up, “hi honey”, he said, “where were you? I was waiting for your visit all day”.
Waiting for permission is a childish habit, it allows us to prolong things and to believe that there is a better time than now. Teaching a person to stop waiting is a beautiful path of discoveries; the person learns to stop waiting for permission and instead goes ahead in the direction of their own dreams and wishes. Rather than waiting for him to call, she suddenly realized that she could be the one to call, or to buy the tickets she was interested in. She realized that she could go out with her friends and he could join them later. There was no reason to wait to register for the dance lessons she wanted to attend. Life is a great force and waiting – when there is no reason – is energy that is not well invested.
If you want to say something to somebody, say it to them, if you want to start learning, do it, do those wellness workshops you were interested in. Don’t delay it because who knows if tomorrow will give us the same opportunities to do what we might have been able to do today?
