📿 Experiencing The Gap

Thoughts on waiting… from a waiting room. Also an impromptu Mudita practice. May we all find nourishment in our moments of hunger.

IMAGE ID: Waiting for my windshield to defrost. I could get agitated by the waiting… or, you know, appreciate these briefly gorgeous ice crystals. They are also suspended between the previous event (condensation), and the event that’s yet to come (my windshield wiper).

There’s also a “cool boredom” pun in here, I’m sure of it.

Hello you, Adreanna here with this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

This morning I woke up early and poured my body into our car, without coffee or sustenance, to have my blood drawn. I’m excited to be getting a full blood workup: everything from the vitals, like cholesterol testing, to a battery of “tick tests” for diseases like Lyme’s. (If you’ve been reading along with us at The Laundry then you’re familiar with my tick neurosis.)

I like having a window into this often mysterious body that I live in. Even though I can feel what the climate is like in here, I rarely get to see proof of what’s happening under my skin. It’s thrilling, transgressive even, to have doctors read the information that lives in my blood; like shining a floodlight into the great mystery of it all, and reporting back in detail. Anyways, this was the thought that carried me through rush hour highway driving without food or caffeine in my system. 

When I arrived at the clinic, I entered a waiting room that was packed like a matchbox with others; people who had also heeded their doctors orders not to have food or caffeine in their system. I may be reading tea leaves here, but the signs were on their faces. We all looked a little sunken and grumpy. I confirmed with the receptionist that I had fasted before my test and wedged myself politely against the wall.

As I shifted my weight from foot to foot, I did the mental arithmetic of how many of us were waiting divided by how long each blood draw was taking. I estimated that I would be waiting for 30 minutes? Maybe 45? I thought longingly of the coconut oatmeal bite tucked away in my purse. I plotted where to find a latte between this waiting room and the highway home. I projected myself into the future to make the present a bit more bearable. My fingers found the phone in my pocket as I toyed with the idea of escaping into a screen.  

The thing about a waiting room, or any place of waiting (like a grocery line, a subway platform, or a period of one’s life) is that it’s largely a universally agreed upon unpleasant place to be. I’ve never met someone who enjoys waiting, as an activity. Waiting is perfunctory, a space between this thing that has happened, and the thing that will be happening next. Waiting is a space that breeds agitation. It’s a non-event to endure. Even if one has food and coffee in their system, and a comfortable waiting room seat. 

In Buddhist-speak, waiting conjures First Noble Truth territory. This is the inescapable truth that being a human includes suffering and discontent in various forms, on a nuanced spectrum.

Waiting, or at least my relationship to waiting,  fits neatly under the submenu of “all pervasive suffering”. It’s the itchy, niggling feeing that’s evoked when nothing is WRONG per se… buuuuut it could always be a little bit better. More interesting. More tasty. More tailored to my preferences. Who wants to be present to hunger in a waiting room when there are infinite escapes on a hand held device and fantasies of a future latte? 

It occurs to me that this might be why some people don’t enjoy meditation practice or don’t feel like meditation is “working.” In my experience at least, meditation can feel a lot like waiting; waiting for some sort of result. Waiting for some kind of feeling. Waiting for feedback that just staying present to our breath is worth our time and effort. Waiting for our mind to clear. Waiting for the timer to end. Waiting to jump up and check meditation off of our list so that we can move on to what’s “actually” happening. 

The punchline, of course, is that there’s nothing to wait for. The main event is what’s currently happening. This is it. Nothing more. Nothing less. It’s by releasing the grip, the tension of waiting, the anticipation, the tumbling forward into the future while our feet are still on the ground… the searching for something to fill the space, the urge to take the edge off of simply being…

…

…

…

That it becomes possible to relax. 

Into this. 

Just this. 

Without agitation. Whether we find this moment tasty or not. 

The tension of waiting reminds me a bit of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s reflection on working with boredom. In the book Mindfulness In Action, he describes:

“Hot boredom is like being locked in a padded cell. You are bored, miserable, and irritated. You will probably experience lots of that in your meditation practice.

Behind the boredom, or even within it, you feel something refreshing: cool boredom. With cool boredom, you don't feel imprisoned. Cool boredom is quite spacious, and it creates further softness and sympathy toward ourselves. The boredom is cooling, refreshing, like the water from a cold mountain stream… In that space, we are no longer afraid of allowing ourselves to experience a gap.” 

Allowing ourselves to experience a gap. 

This is what came to the top of mind as I stood wedged in the clinic waiting room, fingers itching to activate my phone. 

I decided to stand there for a little while first, and just take the whole thing in. The faint smell of sterilization mixed with the scents of those standing near me; shampoos, maybe lotions, the ambient smells of people’s homes that tend to stick to their clothes. Customary neon track lighting. Beige plaster walls, in a washable semi-gloss finish. Grey linoleum floors, speckled to hide dirt and stains. The sound of the receptionist checking arrivals in with the route delivery of someone who’s said these words a billion times. 

I lifted my gaze and began peeking at who was in this space with me. It’s a marvel that of all the times, on all of the days, in all the medical labs in New York, that we should be in a space of waiting together. That we should be here, right now, choosing to either fill, or experience the gap. What are the odds, really? Here we are, standing together, so that someone can read the information that lives in our blood. Bonkers.

I silently and spontaneously began offering each of my waiting room companions the coconut oat bite in my purse. I imagined their faces transformed, enjoying it with cartoonish delight. It became a game, an impromptu Mudita practice, a natural filling of the gap by way of first letting myself experience it. I moved my gaze around the room, offering my oat bite, and watching hunger turn into satisfied joy. I tried to be as discreet as possible, as to not appear psychotic. I imagined getting caught staring at someone, and explaining what I was doing. The thought of it made me laugh out loud, which then definitely made me appear psychotic. 

A woman standing near me noticed that I was just hanging out, unoccupied, and struck up a conversation. Her ticket was three numbers behind me. She had worked for the State of New York in her twenties, but left the workforce when she had her first child. We cooed at photos of each other’s children and traded book recommendations.

When it was my turn to get my blood drawn, I offered her my actual oat bite. She had a breakfast bar waiting in her car. “Enjoy!” She chirped. At which point I realized that surprisingly, I already had. Experiencing this particular gap, and the moments that filled it, was actually fairly enjoyable. Even if it wasn’t how I would have chosen to spend my time.

“You too!” I chirped back, and thanked her for waiting with me. 

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