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We are so often waiting for something to happen—waiting for appointments, waiting on hold for customer assistance, waiting in line, waiting for approval, waiting for an apology, waiting for a specific date or event! And so we have all done a wild variety of things to keep ourselves occupied while we wait for something more important to happen. Here is just a sampling of the things I’ve done while waiting, myself. Perhaps it will offer you some helpful ideas of things to do while you’d rather be doing something else. (I’m leaving out any activities that involve my phone or computer, honestly, because since I became addicted to Facebook and online scrabble, I am pretty much happily entertained waiting for almost any amount of time, including the period between January and that late Minnesota spring.)

Waiting for an appointment: My go to activity, provided there’s a trash can, is purse-cleaning. For folks who don’t carry purses, I suppose wallets or pockets might substitute. I throw away expired coupons and business cards of people I can’t remember meeting, count and arrange my money neatly, try out my pens on old gas station receipts and toss out the broken or out of ink ones. I move things from one pocket to another. This is deeply satisfying and can take anywhere from three minutes to thirty-five. And when the appointment finally comes, I feel so neat and tidy!

Waiting on hold for customer assistance: This one really depends—is there a relentless ad playing over and over? If so, I’ll need a more aggressive distraction. A friend recently went to her closet and counted all the pillow cases. Twenty-five, she said. I sometimes like to sweep the floor or sort out and recycle the piles of mail that seem to generate themselves. If there’s no loud voice yelling at me, I can do something quieter. In that case, I may get a piece of paper and a pen and write a list of something. To-do lists, of course, are a trusty standby, but a specialty to-do list can be fun. Holiday gifts to buy. Letters to write. Things to throw away. People I want to invite over to dinner.

Waiting in line: What I like to do most is to make up stories about the people around me who are also waiting. Sometimes I actually talk to them and get to know them, but I prefer eavesdropping and deciding who they are and what they care about without actually knowing anything. Depending on what we’re lined up for, the stories may vary. I find that this occupation keeps me from getting bitter about the people in front of me or, God help me, the ones who butt in line. In line for a rental car, which can on occasion take hours and not minutes, I sometimes look at people and decide what kind of car they will want. I suppose it’s obvious by looking at me that I always get the cheapest one.

Waiting for approval: Now, on a cosmic scale there are people whose approval I will never get, so no amount of amusement will take me there. But there are people, and animals, who simply take some time to warm up and accept that I’m OK—maybe acceptance is a better word than approval here. What I like to do in this situation is to draw back. Rather than push for the approval, I recede. While doing this, I concentrate on any small movement or gesture that is coming towards me, and I receive it as actively as I can. I learned to do this with people from doing it with shy animals. Try it; it does seem to work!

Waiting for an apology: Again, there are some people who are just never going to come through with apologies, and they’re often the ones whom I most feel owe me one . What I’ve tried to do as I’ve gotten older is to concentrate on the other parts of the relationships, the parts that are OK, and strengthen them, so there’s a strong container for the apology if it ever comes. Admittedly, I’m not sure this is a great strategy, because people sometimes appear to think that things are fine and no apology is needed when I do this. But the older I’ve gotten, the less I have cared about apologies unless they are accompanied by real change of heart or behavior. I don’t think any of us apologizes well when we are defensive. So, hope springs eternal. I hope that my generosity when I move on without apologies will eventually bring on a genuine one, and from time to time it really has.

Finally, waiting for a specific date or event: If it’s something I’m looking forward to, like someone I love coming to visit or a favorite holiday, I make up little tasks for myself to accomplish before it happens. Small things to do every day, so that I feel some connection between my own behavior and time passing. (I can make great calendar/ lists about these small actions while waiting for an appointment or on hold!) If it’s something I’m ambivalent about, or dreading, I think up small rewards for myself on regular intervals while I wait and map those out similarly.

It’s fun to think about how we structure waiting as a microcosm of how we live our lives, because truly so much of life is about waiting, one way or another.

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Rev. Meg Riley

Senior Minister at Church of the Larger Fellowship

Meg has been a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than twenty years. As a UU kid in West Virginia, she quickly learned to enjoy being "different," which has served her well in a "different" life. Meg lives in Minneapolis, where she enjoys walking by lakes, gardening, reading and writing. She also lives online, where she enjoys hanging out, keeping up with people, and playing the occasional game of Scrabble. She is the parent of a teenager, and the companion of a number of four legged friends.

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