We’ve all been there. Something big is just around the corner - just out of sight but close enough that we can smell it like the steam out of a just-opened pizza box - and its mere impending existence is enough to make anything that is happening on this side of that corner feel like its holding us back from our destiny. We try to be patient, but it’s worthless.
That’s pretty much where I am right now. The pizza box of the next phase of my life is on the counter around the corner and I’m so ready to dig in, but mom won’t let me go get any until I finish my homework. Metaphorically speaking, anyway. I’m 36 years old and I haven’t had homework for a really long time. But you get the point, right?
I entered this year on a high, ready to tackle all challenges with immediacy and precision, infused with that typical January jauntiness. But life, of course, has other plans. Right now I’m playing the waiting game on so many things. I’m waiting for the sellers to be ready to close on the two-family house Shanima and I are buying so we can start moving. I’m waiting until we move to set up my new studio - which will be in the basement of the new house. I’m waiting until that studio is fully in place until I start booking new clients. I’m waiting to print off the newly-designed postcard-sized advertisements that I plan to share around local businesses in the new neighborhood. I’m waiting until all of that is in place to launch any and all video series that I might embark on since I don’t have a place to record in my current apartment.
I hate waiting. Not to say that’s always a bad thing. It’s not that I’m impatient so much as I am a hustler by nature, which keeps me from being able to truly chill on a deep level most of the time. Like, even when I’m not “doing anything” I’m kind of always in the middle of something, at least on a mental level.
All of that said, even if the waiting is a bit unnerving and anxiety-inducing, I am finding the lull to be nice in some ways. Life happens so fast, even if some things seem to take forever. Good things are worth waiting for, as they say, so it’s important not to lose faith and sabotage the success that is just around the corner by succumbing to the desire for instant gratification.
Sometimes, stillness is a virtue, and life reminded me of that over the weekend, when I met up with my brother Nai, who had just picked up some gymnastic rings to work out on. We were both hype, so we took the rings to the park and it was an insanely killer workout even though we were just doing basics. Even just regular push ups and dips became a serious challenge. The hardest part was maintaining stillness when all my arms wanted to do was shake like an earthquake as I moved through the motions. After we got back to his house, soreness already creeping in, we watched some videos of professional gymnasts on the rings and it was amazing seeing them flow through their routines and pause in seemingly impossible positions, holding themselves completely still for several seconds at a time. It made me realize that while stillness often feels like idleness, in the right context, it can be the ultimate sign of mastery.
I am taking this meditation to heart. Reminding myself that stillness and slowness are not things that I should be avoiding, but rather virtues that I should be aspiring to. The world will continue to move around me at a speed that is faster than my body can even conceptualize. And all of those major, life-changing events in my near future will arrive in due course. When they do, I know it will inevitably feel like they came too fast and were over too soon. But rather than driving myself insane by hamster-wheeling myself to exhaustion while I wait for the next major event in my life, I will take a deep breath. As I exhale I will appreciate that I am here to breathe. I will appreciate that I have the time to write. And I will prepare myself mentally to make the most and the best out of the opportunities that are just around the corner.