Finding refuge in times of waiting

There’s a large waiting room at my dentist’s office—the place where everyone is implicitly invited to sit and wait. It’s polished and sleek; the chairs are comfy, and everyone has swapped their shoes for slip-on sandals at the door. I gaze out across a sea of smartphones, blank stares, bright lights, and low-humming anxiety.

“You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race Down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace And grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, Headed, I fear, towards a most useless place. The Waiting Place… for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go Or the mail to come, or the rain to go Or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow Or waiting around for a Yes or No Or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting."

— Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Dr. Seuss

•••

They called my name quicker than expected—eureka! But then minutes later, I was lying supine in a dentist’s chair with a bright light hovering ~1’ from my face, mouth agape, as the tear of plastic surgical bags crunched in my ears and I caught the point of metal tools in the corner of my eye.

Suddenly, I was waiting again—waiting for this to be over so I could walk home peacefully in the rain.

•••

I can’t shake this sense that waiting is a fruitless endeavor. Is it actually necessary? What am I “waiting” for? How much of my life have I spent waiting?

To wait is to stand by and allow time to pass until something happens. It is a verb; there is action being taken and energy being expended. But not only does it take energy, it’s often an unpleasant swirl of uncertainty, anticipation, jitters, and boredom.

Waiting carries an inherent discomfort because expectation is built into it; to wait means we’ve stamped certainty of a future event in our minds, and in waiting, it will come. Waiting has flavors of anxiety. Of hunger. Of longing.

The more time we wait for things to happen, the less time we live in the present moment. We become what we practice. All that time focusing on the future takes us away from what’s right here and now, coming through our six sense doors — eyes, ears, nose, tongue, touch, and mind.

Anytime I’m waiting, I’m holding a desire to be somewhere other than right where I am.

•••

Back to the dentist chair…

My yearning for the appointment to be over seduces me into a trance. I’m knee deep in The Waiting Place. How amazing would it be not to be lying in this chair with a metal hook in my mouth? My aching desire for it to end builds with every scrape of tooth. Yes, I could expel myself from the chair and high-tail it out of the dentist’s office without a cleaning, but that steps beyond my acceptable social moral code.

So, with nowhere to go, I stared at a tiny corner of a ceiling tile and meditated.

Slowing down, breathing deeply, and noticing what’s here. I see the part of myself that’s waiting and wanting this to be done, and I see how triggered this part is by the whole ordeal. It’s holding so tight to the desire for it to be over that I lost sight of the fullness of what’s alive in the room.

But by pausing and making space, I also see other parts of myself hiding under the surface. There’s the part that enjoys the sensation of clean teeth; the part that’s grateful to have access to dental care; the part enjoying the soothing piano music playing in the background (thanks to the care of my friendly dental hygienist, who set the vibe). The chair is actually quite comfortable to lie in, despite the circumstances.

I touch a flicker of peace. There’s nothing to wait for — I’m getting a tooth cleaning and dental health evaluation. It’s all part of tending to the garden of health and vitality.

I kept returning to that corner of the ceiling tile. Even with a curved straw sucking the moisture out of my mouth, I could always take a breath, return to the tile, and let the waves of the present moment roll over me. Nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Surrender — giving ourselves fully to our experience without trying to change it — is always just a breath away. I can be be with what’s happening in the dentist’s chair and open myself up to the richness of the moment, instead of waiting for it to end and dreading every time she picks up the hooked scraper again because she missed a spot.

So my invitation to you, dear reader: step into your next waiting room with the reverence of stepping into a monastery. Follow your breath. Trace the shadows of a ceiling tile. Notice what happens if you don’t put any energy into waiting. It's a simple yet paradigm-shifting switch to make. The difference between the experience of "waiting" vs. "being" is remarkable. And it's a simple paradigm shift that any of us can make. Pulling out your phone is avoiding the moment and seeking a place to distract from the waiting. We can welcome the richness of waiting, and all of the feelings and textures it evokes, instead of turning away from it.

As long as we’re settled in the present moment, there’s nothing to wait for.