The Art of Waiting

By Adv. Harjeet Kaur

I never had a good time with time. Years of my life I have spent following schedules, ambitions, and affairs, which promised to last forever but turned out to be fleeting, lasting only six months. Time had invariably come away, careless and silent, and left me in its silence.  

Previously, I assumed that waiting was a form of discipline, and the universe was letting me know that I was not yet ready. Now I see it differently. Waiting is a form of freezing time, as the parent would freeze their arm around the infant before the baby takes their first steps.  

Being a person who spends his life with tales, I have come to understand that waiting is where healing makes the humble breakthrough. The distance separating the resistance and the realization is where we eventually cease running until we get a chance to listen to what we think. People do not simply find answers in that inactivity; they rediscover their ability.  

Waiting isn’t always poetic. There are times when I gaze down at a wall at night and ask myself how someone can have no more reasons. At other times, I’m brewing coffee at 2 a.m., in the warmth of a cold winter season. At times, it can be as simple as presenting oneself in the workplace, in prayer, or even to oneself when nothing is happening indoors, which can bring a sense of joy.  

All this waiting around is a little rehearsal for the time that we can start moving again. It tells us in the world we have to be running to stop; to lose is to stop. 

I found that the Rest is not a weakness, but rather the process of recalibration. After experiencing much chaos in the nervous system, Rest allows the nervous system to learn to be safe. Movement is not growth, and it is only after we can sit and be uncomfortable without allowing it to become who we are that we can realize that we have grown.  

Waiting is a virtue that requires obedience and not inactivity. Some doors can never be forced open by pounding; without being forced, you have to expect them to open calmly by not insisting that you are forced to enter, but standing calmly to this expectation that you belong there.  

I would fill silence with distractions, scrolling, worrying, and creating futures that never worked out.  One day, I ceased struggling with stillness. I began listening to it. There, something odd in that silence caught my eye, a direction.

Waiting made me develop in another way. I plant roots, and all that which is above the ground appears stagnant. It demonstrated that development is not always evident when it comes to momentum; at times, maturity is created in the shadow.

Now that time is slowing down, I no longer hoard it by rushing. I seek signs that a life still flows like a living stream: a bird building its nest on the balcony, of golden light that spreads across my wall, and the humming of futile objects that have been decided upon. Nothingness does not exist but is where regeneration breathes its breath.

To that understanding, I take solace. Provided the world continues turning noiselessly, I can as well. So long as dawn is ongoing to present himself to the sky, I can continue to present myself.

Waiting does not happen alone, but is a masked relation.

Each of us carries our own pauses, our own seasons of silence. But beneath them all, we’re linked by something invisible, a shared rhythm of becoming.

So if you’re waiting for clarity, for healing, for something to begin finally, always remember this:

“You are not behind.

You are not forgotten.

You are simply evolving.

Patiently, deliberately, and never alone”.

By Adv. Harjeet Kaur