Rituals of Waiting - or one more 'how I'm surviving the pandemic' piece...

Lately I seem to be creating rituals of waiting, or perhaps they are rituals of anticipation, that help with waiting.

I was never a patient person, almost all my skills I acquired fast and do with intensity - I even cook faster than anyone I know. In the last ten years I took on more and more work in Haiti, a country where nothing works, nothing can be relied on, nothing is taken for granted - and so I have learned at last to wait, to shrug, to go around the problem and find a different way, but mainly I’ve found a home for my interdisciplinary skills, and ways to manage and not as much patience as I might have.

This year all that has changed - no longer able to go to Haiti due to circumstances, I was on the cusp of a new life in a different country, learning a new language, renewing my relationship with a family member who has been far away for 15 years… and the pandemic put a stop to all that. Where to find great enough reserves of patience for this? To sit on the fence for 6, 9, 12 months, who can tell? I am not a fence-sitter, I’m by nature committed to the enterprise of the moment, intense, even obsessive about moving forward. Stasis is anathema. The journey is more than the destination, but now all our journeys are internalized.

I don’t really do ritual, coming from a family of skeptics and atheists for generations - we barely even celebrate birthdays, we’re spread all around the world. I can’t bring myself to perform any religious observance, even to placate those my atheism upsets.

But suddenly, I am concocting small patterns of behaviour - that the coffee can must be empty on the weekend, so that I can fully enjoy the freshly ground beans of a different type of coffee, tomorrow. This took careful planning over several days, and it’s utterly insignificant to anyone else - but it’s planning, it’s a sort of micro-control of happenings that gives me satisfaction. I don’t hold any superstitions, and it doesn’t especially presage well for other plans, perhaps it’s just ‘practice’ as a practise?

Caring for, maintaining things (tools, the house, the garden) - I was always the ‘wait til it really needs fixing’ type - but now I’m trying to fill my time, consciously practicing maintenance as a kind of meditation, fore-sight, renewal, making patterns - “oh, I did this exactly six years ago”, and “such and such happened last time”, I did that with a mostly forgotten friend, oh! this is the shirt I took back out of the rag-bag to paint in, that I wore in a photo 10 years back… And sometimes I feel drawn to reconnect with that long-ago friend, or their children, or look at the photo-albums from that time - nostalgia? Is that also a form of ritual?

I started yoga again - a once a week class at the botanical garden on the lawn, with a teacher who is heavy on the inspirational exhortations, but doesn’t mention anything religious! Even there, my ability to do the exercises has diminished, no denying, but my attitude to the practice, my ‘being there’, is much more comfortable, contemplative. I enjoy the flamboyant tree overhead, I really do hear the birds, I am present. Also I’m conscious of the importance of maintaining strength and balance, now that this year’s plans are next years…

I don't know where I'm going with this - probably nowhere! But it is not so bad.