What are we waiting for?

With advent, we have entered a period of codified waiting. For Christians this means liturgical offices and music, the lighting of candles and, in the Orthodox church, a 40-day fast, in expectation of both Christmas and the second coming. For unbelievers, and those for whom the festival is all about feasting and presents, it oftenmeans advent calendars (though the more expensive of these undermine the ritual of counting down to excess by commodifying the waiting).

In these high-capitalist days we tend to treat waiting as an affliction that must be abolished. One of the shocks of the pandemic has been thatwhile we are one-click ordering more than ever before, we have been forced to learn to wait. Some of these waits (for shops to reopen), while aggravating, are eminently manageable, partly because it turns out they are not for necessities. Other waits – for illumination about what exactly this virus does, for the chance to see loved ones, have been far harder to manage, for the scale of their ramifications, and because there is no obvious terminus.

Waiting can also be an opportunity. Perhaps that’s one of the thingswe’ve learned – that, for all its deep stresses and griefs, a forced indeterminacy can focus the mind on the present, and the quality of that present. That it is necessary to celebrate now (go for a walk, watch the flowers grow, call a friend) rather than waiting for an uncertain future, and the chimera of normality.