Willing To Wait

I just finished reading a book about a woman who has the most enduring patience in the world. She's part of Greek mythology, the wife of Odysseus. Her husband left to fight in the Trojan war and didn't return for twenty years. She raised their son on her own and waited for Odysseus to return. She was a woman who was willing to wait.

I'm not sure if it is simply a function of society, but most of us are not willing to wait. I'm not. I am the most impatient woman in the whole world. I hate waiting for things. I won't wait for a bus longer than five minutes before deciding that it would be faster just to walk to where I'm going. I don't like waiting for my food to be ready and will only wait when I'm cooking for someone else as well. When I'm waiting for something, I always carry a book to read or have music to listen to. That being said, I think when there is something worth waiting for, I would.

A conversation that was held often at my house in London this year was the ability to wait for the right man to come along before getting into a relationship. My housemate seems to have infinite patience when it comes to this. I didn't. I've had a lot of relationships in my life and they have, for the most part, been the wrong ones. Part of me always wanted to say that maybe this would be what I was waiting for, but then I would realize that I hadn't really been waiting at all. About six months ago, I decided that I would wait. I would wait until there was someone who would sweep me off my feet and be what I was looking for in my life. It's surprising how when you stop looking for something it appears. When I returned to work this summer, I found it. I got lucky.

Many people in our society are unwilling to wait. We want everything and we want it now. The number of divorces speak to the number of people who rushed into something because they weren't willing to wait for more of their lives. We have fast food because we cannot wait for food to be made in a healthy way. We have radio and TV to constantly update us on situations in our cities and globally because we cannot wait to find out the next day. We have instant messaging and email so that we don't have to wait to get a hold of someone on the telephone or send a letter. We settle for things that are less than what we want simply so that we will have something immediately. We shouldn't.

We should be willing to wait for the things that we want. The generations before us had a better idea of how to do that. Many of parents and grandparents lived through WW2 waiting for the ones they loved to come home. My great grandmother waited for my great grandfather at this time, while raising their four children and building a cottage. It is amazing what we are willing to wait for and what we are not. What would happen if we made different priorities in our lives? What if we decided to wait for the things that would truly change our lives, such as the great love of our lives? What would you be willing to wait for if you knew that it would come one day?

I don't know if I would be able to wait for twenty years, but I know that I have waited for somethings. And it's been worth it. I still want to make plans and don't really want to wait to know where I'm going to be in two years. I want to know now, but I'm beginning to be willing to wait. I know that someone has a plan for me and I just need to trust in that.