Waiting

Waiting has always been a pet peeve. Yes, I am an impatient person and I hate waiting. But waiting is a major part of life. You cannot escape it. For instance, you have to line up and wait for your turn to be served at a fast food store. Or if you choose to dine at a fancy restaurant, you certainly have to wait for your food to be cooked and to be served. In applying for important papers like passports, certificates, and the like, you need to wait. Waiting is an inevitable part of life and patience is necessary for us to get through it.

The past years have provided me with ample opportunities to practice the virtue of patience. I force myself to live on a fast lane, to make sure I get a lot done in a short period of time. But along the way, there are moments wherein life tells me to slow down, pause, and have a breather. One such instance is recently when I got sick due to MSG-overdose. It made me rethink my priorities. It made me rethink my decisions. Suddenly I found myself asking, am I happy at where I am right now? (The answer of course is no. I have yet to fulfill my dreams of becoming an international human rights lawyer. Though to be honest, I am glad to have achieved so much last 2011, which marks the start of my being a teacher, an archaeologist, a writer, a translator, a researcher, and a volunteer. I still find it incredible that I got to play all these roles aside from the usual daughter-student-sister-friend roles of a humdrum existence.)

Waiting... Almost everybody, almost everything seems to ask me to wait, sometimes even without meaning to. Perhaps I don't really hate waiting that much. I've waited for him for several years now. The problem is, I don't even know if he knows that I am waiting for him, which makes the process even more difficult though yes, exciting. What if I waited for naught? On the other hand, what if I were to be rewarded for my patience?

The act of waiting for a loved one, the feelings of whom you are not even certain of, is a risky venture. Without news of him for a very long time now, you are in constant struggle against yourself: to forget or not to forget? To continue to love or not? To move on or not? When does a heart need to stop longing for a person's affection?

But sometimes the heart is a stubborn machine. And if Becquer were to counsel me, he might berate me and tell me that my heart is a stupid machine. A heart that loves, yearns, hopes, dreams, and revels in the beauty of waiting with or without the guarantee of a reward... For it is in waiting that the heart grows more mature. For it is in waiting that the heart humbles itself and submits itself to passions. For it is in waiting that the heart learns how it is to love truly. For a heart that truly loves expects nothing but delights in the hope of an imagined future.

That is the romantic me pouring her heart out.

Now the rational me butts in and tries to shoo away all these feelings. The rational mind busies itself in everything, finding things to do, making the person more experienced in other aspects of life other than the love life. The rational mind does not want to admit it, but it is also waiting together with the heart-that-truly-loves. The rational mind pretends to get busy, pretends to work and have no time for play. But in reality it does so only to pass the time as it tells itself that no matter what the outcome of all this waiting, the person will become more beautiful than ever.

written 6:30 pm, December 3, 2011

Trinoma Foodcourt