One of my very favorite lectures is the one I deliver on the theatre of the absurd. This lecture helps them prepare to read The Dumb Waiter, The Sandbox and The Bald Soprano. The topic that I focus on is WAITING. The world of existential absurdity is built on the experience of doing nothing very slowly. Characters in all of the above play spend the majority of their days waiting. They are waiting for death, waiting for love and the ultimate waiting – the Waiting for Godot!
I really unnerve teenagers when I point out that the majority of their lives is spent waiting. They are sitting in my class waiting for the bell to ring so that they can go to another room and wait for that class to be over to go to another waiting and another room and another waiting and then waiting for school to be over, waiting to go home, waiting for dinner, waiting for that show to come on, waiting to get to bed – and laying in bed waiting for the whole waiting thing to happen again.
We wait for Spring Break. We wait for next year. We wait to graduate. We wait to get into college. We wait for college to be over. We wait to get a job. We wait for a relationship. We wait to retire and ultimately, we are waiting for . . . well I don’t get into that . . .
We watch the clock and we strike days off the calendar for the next event and the next event. And of course IT never comes. That thing we are waiting for NEVER comes and the proof of that is that when it arrives (or so we think) it produces just another kind of waiting. Carry a journal with you. Set your cell phone to go off every 10 minutes. Ask yourself what you are waiting for. You will be waiting. Trust me you’ll be waiting.
3 comments on “Doing Nothing Very Slowly”
I’ve spent time observing this as well…and I’ve learned that we all do this.
Always focused on the future, as though the present is nothing more than an annoying delay in this thing we want to experience.
The funny thing is, when we realize we’re doing this, it becomes an interesting project to sit back and just be present.
Where are we while we’re doing what we’re doing? Do we even know? Do this enough times and you learn to witness your thoughts. It’s an eye-opening experience.
I feel there’s an art to using our imagination to envision the “future” from a creative standpoint. This can be exciting and a cool strategy to use.
But when we get caught up in this, we attach to outcomes – and then we don’t appreciate the feeling of that outcome because we’re waiting for the next one.
And the next one.
So yes, we’re all waiting. But we don’t have to. It’s a choice – but only when we know that’s all it is.
A choice.
We’re not just waiting … we’re “hurry up and waiting!”
Somebody told me that we added a lot of stress to our lives during the Industrial Age, because at that time, we took on the idea that everything “should work.” So if you turn on your machine and it doesn’t work, you feel robbed. You might rant and rave. You hate to wait just because the darn machine doesn’t work. In the computer age, I think we got a lot worse. I got a new cheapie laptop, and it literally takes 5 minutes just to boot up. I haven’t had a computer that slow since 1989. But why does it freak me out so much? Because I hate to wait!! And even though that computer can allow me to call someone in France for free (and that saves a whole lot of time compared to taking a boat or plane), I still hate to wait that extra 3-1/2 minutes.
So good for you for teaching your students about waiting. Maybe it will help them live more and wait less.
🙂
I guess the key to not waiting is to make the most of every moment.
I took a comedy class once and the professor told us how she spent hours and hours in rush-hour, stand-still traffic. She rolled down the windows of her car and blew bubbles out of the windows.
I guess it takes a certain zaniness to figure out crazy stuff to do at moments like those, but it’s always uplifting when people think of fun ways to wait.
🙂