Waiting

I don't much like waiting. It feels useless, wasteful, unproductive. Waiting means being out of control, and I don't like that either. I suspect most people don't, and that's why we don't like waiting. I hear there are people you can rent to stand in lines for you so you don't have to wait. That's funny, but if I had the means I'd be tempted to do that too.

The other day here in the rehab ward my physical therapist and I had a conversation about the time it takes for broken bones to heal. She knows me well enough to know that I am impatient with my progress and I have a bent towards overdoing things, pushing myself, overtaxing my already levied body. "You've got to give it time," she said. "Can't you invent a pill to speed this up?" I said. She laughed. "Oh, if only I could," said she. And then this: "I'm pretty sure I could retire early."

That got me to thinking. What if we could speed the healing process? It would mean a lot less waiting, to be sure. But I suspect it would mean a lot less human contact as well, and we already suffer from too much isolation in the name of technology and progress and speed. Just yesterday I was out in the hall and saw a beautiful thing. One of the elderly patients here shimmied ever so slowly in her walker out of her room and over to the room across the hall. "Sandra?" she called from the door. "Oh, Julie!" came the reply. "How wonderful of you to come visit!"

What would happen if we invented a pill or a machine to speed the healing process? Certainly not a friendship like that, born on the wings of brokenness and nurtured in the nest of the time it takes to heal.

No, I don't much like waiting. But if I had a choice between waiting and loneliness, I'd choose waiting every time.