Impatience with Waiting

Share This Post

Share on facebook
Share on linkedin
Share on twitter
Share on email

I have had the amazing gift of having brilliant, beautiful and talented women friends from Harvard College.  We’ve known each other for over 25 years.  We’re now in our mid-40’s.  We have stayed close to each other.  We have been there for the highs and lows in our lives.  For most of it, we’ve somehow felt impervious to the vicissitudes in life.  With our strength, brains and guts, we’ve believed we would achieve our dreams.  Innocently we believed life would not betray our ideals in any way.  Some have married.  Some are ending those ties.  Others disappointed.  Some still deeply in love. For those of us with children, most are on a part-time, made-my-own-track career trajectory at which we would have gasped with horror in our college days. Twenty five years later, our footsteps in life have offered us an altered view of life.  Of late, I have become troubled. Troubled with how much we, and many other amazing women, are still waiting.  Waiting.  Waiting.
Last week, one of my closest lifelong friends from this close-knit group woke up to get ready for work as she has for the last 24 years.  Without notice, her brain hemmoraged, leaving her in a coma.  It’s so unfortunate that it takes these horrific experiences to wake us up.  As I’ve gathered with my friends, I have come to a place of impatience.  Impatience with how so many of us, myself included, have been waiting to live as full a life as possible.  It may be the condition of humans.  But I do find this affliction more prevalent with women and oddly, with highly gifted women.  It seems our success in working incredibly hard to meet the surprising approval of our external world is the very thing that has kept us waiting…and waiting…before we dare to truly breathe our life.
So I thought…
What would life look like if we were no longer waiting…
Waiting to be ready
Waiting to be good enough
Waiting for permission
Waiting for approval
Waiting for the right moment
Waiting to be saved by a man
Waiting for someone else to make us happy, safe and fulfilled
Waiting for a safe day to do that thing we so desperately want to do but are too afraid to do
Waiting for someone else to tell us we’re ready
Waiting for someone else to open the door for us
Waiting for someone else to validate the dream that resides within, that we know in the deep recesses of our being, is the right life’s pursuit
Looked at another way, what would life and living look like if we lived believing:
I am ready
I am good enough
I give myself permission
I give myself approval
This is the right moment
I will save myself
I will make me happy, safe and fulfilled
This is the safe day to do that thing I so desperately want to do but am too afraid to do
I am the only one who can tell me if I’m ready
I will open the door for me
I validate the dream that resides within, that I know in the deep recesses of my being, is the right life pursuit for me
If we lived every day, believing, knowing and acting from these beliefs, what would our days smell, taste and feel like? How would it feel to truly serve our life?  In return, how would life serve us?
How would it be to soar through life like majestic eagles in flight — powerful and free?
Let us not just imagine it girlfriends.  Let us live it.  Now.