No waste of time

In waiting, we can find ourselves

Some years ago, I wrote a piece for the Democrat-Gazette about how the season of Advent, a season of waiting and expectation, is sadly neglected in our rush from one holiday to the next. I think I may have said that we could all benefit from a period of waiting before Christmas.

Well, I guess the old proverb is true — be careful what you wish for.

Now, we have an Advent that began back in March and will likely extend well into the new year. This year, far from rushing from one holiday to another, we are all waiting — waiting for the vaccine, waiting for the pandemic to end, waiting for normalcy to return, if it ever will.

Waiting is not something most people do well. Time hangs heavily on our hands. We are restless and nervous, even anxious at times. The modern world is a world of energy and movement. If you are not moving forward, you are falling behind, we tell ourselves, and, in many ways, it is true. Jobs change. Businesses come and go. Fortunes rise and fall. Being still is not something that we feel comfortable with.

But is waiting a waste of time? Well, yes and no. Samuel Beckett, who is probably the poet laureate of waiting, showed us in his famous play “Waiting for Godot” that when fulfillment of purpose and desire is postponed, time ceases to be a river flowing irresistibly to some end and becomes a flood of undifferentiated time, a “waste” of time.

Vladimir and Estragon must wait for the arrival of Godot, who has, it seems, promised something beneficial to Vladimir and Estragon. “We’re saved!!” Vladimir says. But Godot does not come, though he sends messengers to arrange new meetings. Vladimir and Estragon must wait in hope, but in a hope that is both uncertain and deferred.

This might seem a terribly sad condition to be in. They can rebel and leave (or kill themselves, which they try to do in the most comically inept way), but that would cut off this hope and wouldn’t settle anything. So, they wait, and time becomes a waste, one that seems ready to drown them.

But even in this time of suspension and doubt, Vladimir and Estragon are neither helpless nor passive. They play verbal games, they quarrel and make up, they reminisce and dispute. They are like an old married couple who make up a life out of shared experiences. Time may have become a waste, but it is certainly not wasted. Something extraordinary happens. They have made a monument to human determination and courage out of their waiting.

It is relatively easy to believe that life is good when we are rushing off to the next fulfilled desire or purpose. It isn’t as easy when purpose seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. But Vladimir and Estragon show us that all our busy-ness — our rushing to and fro and our pride in accomplishing this or that — is at best a temporary state that conceals what life often ends up being — a waiting. In this waiting we find ourselves.

In this Advent season, so prolonged and hard, we should take some comfort in knowing that we are not alone. We not only share our plight with the whole world, but, if Beckett is right, we are facing a situation that lies at the very heart of what it means to be human. Without this recognition, of what use would Godot or any other kind of salvation be?