When Waiting Becomes a Habit

Waiting does not always feel like waiting.

Sometimes life carries on perfectly well.

You work. You meet your responsibilities. You make plans. You see people. You deal with what needs dealing with.

Nothing looks particularly wrong.

And yet, somewhere in your life, there may be something you keep meaning to come back to.

A decision you have not made.
A conversation you have not had.
A change you have been considering.
Something you want, but have not quite allowed yourself to pursue.

You tell yourself, “not yet.”

And sometimes, not yet is entirely appropriate. There are times when waiting is thoughtful, necessary and wise.

But there is another kind of waiting.

The kind that becomes familiar.

There is no dramatic moment when you decide to abandon what you wanted. It simply gets pushed a little further away.

Next month.
When work settles down.
When circumstances change.
When you feel more certain.
When there is a better reason.

Eventually, you become very good at living around the absence of what you wanted.

And that is what makes this kind of delay so difficult to recognise.

It can become comfortable.

Not because nothing needs to change, but because you have learned how to live with things as they are.

Perhaps the question is not always, “Am I ready?”

Sometimes it is simply:

How long have I been saying “not yet”?

This is one of the ideas I explore in UNFIXED: What Is Mine?, in the chapter When Waiting Becomes Delay.

Because there is a difference between giving something time and giving your life away to waiting.