How about the wait ? How about that feeling of anxiety when I am in an empty room and have nothing to do ?
It may remind me the time I was waiting for my dad to come home. It did feel empty, silent, and like I didn’t know what to do to wait.
And also it feels like almost every time we are waiting in our lives it is something annoying or stressful.
You wait for your plane at the airport, often standing, often uncomfortable.
You wait in the doctor’s room, either in pain or anxious to get a diagnostic.
You wait for an exam, you wait for your turn on the amusement park…
Whatever the wait may be, it has never felt nice for me to be waiting.
The more I wait the more tension I feel, the more I want to release it using easy short-term means.
Waiting feels like a total waste of time, like a chunk of my life that I am throwing away.
But then when I think of what to use that time for, I face the immensity of what I « should » be doing. And I don’t know, there are so many things I should be doing for University, for my business, I feel overwhelmed as soon as I think about it.
I don’t know why it paralyzes me so much. There is an element of not knowing where to start but also the feeling that among all these things that I should be doing none of them I actually desire to do, otherwise I wouldn’t think of them as shoulds but as wants.
So maybe it would be helpful to rearrange them in shoulds vs musts vs wants. Do the things that I must do, and simply give up on the shoulds unless I feel like it.
I don’t want my life to be a life of shoulds. I am willing to put on with the musts, but the rest of it I want to be about the wants :
- I want to travel
- I want to go talk to people (really ? About what ? About joy, purpose, happiness, death)
- I want to share tenderness with my love
- I want to share sweet moments with family
- I want to hang out with friends and play
- I want to read stuff I am interested in and that is not too hard to read
- I want to go climbing
- I want to write my ideas, to clear up my head, to share content when I find it helpful
- I want to go hiking
- I want to plan some of the more complex wants
- I want to watch clever TV shows that make me think
So basically what should I do the next time I am facing the wait :
- Go to my list of musts and take action on them straightaway if possible, or plan them if not.
- Once it’s done or if there were none, go to my list of wants, pick one and do that.
But how about the wants that I cannot act upon on the moment (like travelling obviously, but also hiking or ping pong or family time) ?
I need to set aside time to day dream about what would be awesome and decide, take decisions, settle a time and save the date.
So although it’s a bit more of a « should » vibe I need to add this day-dream time to my wants list.
Done.
But then comes the anxiety of being fleeing forward. Is doing my wants fleeing forward ?
What am I fleeing from when I do a want ?
I am fleeing from :
- the anxiety that comes with the wait, therefore I will never feel free unless I am also able to stay in the wait
- the feeling of being forced to do something, to be doing something that is imposed on me
But are shoulds stuff that is imposed on me ? Not really, I don’t have to study, it’s more something that feels bad while doing it but would probably bring me good emotions down the line, the meaningful vs the expedient.
But it’s also more like it is imposed on me by life because I need to be doing something to make money and to survive and pay for my wants.
But when I think of school, I don’t actually need to study in advance, I know I will manage, and I don’t care enough about McGill to make it happen.
So wouldn’t that be freeing to finally accept to just work hard when the time is right and do whatever the fuck I want before that ?
Yeah, as long as I can manage a 14/20 doing that, it’s probably good enough.
How about coaching though ? How about what actually brings the money in and what I depend on for the next 3.5 years ?
So far what I am doing is good enough so why worry ? Remember that so far it is good enough and just ditch questions around it. It doesn’t matter until it’s a problem, and probably by the time it is a problem I’m gonna be making good money with Airbnb.
As for administrative stuff, I’ll just do it when it’s a must, and pay what I have to pay when I have to pay it.
But I do need to be able to be in the wait, therefore I need to practice some kind of meditation, otherwise my wants will always feel like I am running away.
When I become able to be in the wait, then my wants will finally be pure desire for movements and there would be no reason not to move towards them.
In fact, it doesn’t seem like I owe anything to the world. When you look at animals it seems like the only thing that they do is about movement towards a desire or away from pain.
And I feel like there is a freeing element in that position, in being in a position of stillness, like in water, and from that stillness to just move in one direction or another just because you want to.
That is peace, that is why I feel like I aspire to, that is wisdom, that is bliss, that is enlightenment.