Waiting
We spend a large portion of our lives in wait, the driving force behind each is different but it seems that there is a culture of waiting that has infiltrated modern society. Sometimes one doesn’t have a choice, but rather the opportunity to effectively use the time in wait. I don’t mean wait as in the odd pause at a bus stop where we will invariably feel uncomfortable in our own skin and reach for our safety net… our mobile phone. We are now so ingrained in a culture of “always on”, that we don’t know the importance or the lesson learned in waiting.
We wait until the last moment of the evening to tell someone we love them, we wait until a conversation is over to tell our parents or loved ones that we love or miss them. General conversations start with the most “important” thing being said first, and that often isn’t , “I love you”, I just hope its a matter of saving the best till last which is hopefully a meaningful goodbye or a heart felt message that we wait until the last word is said.
There are many reasons why we wait, but there are two that I identify with more than any other, the first is the waiting for something worthwhile, like a person you care about, or the return of a sentimental worldly possession. It has no material worth to anyone but yourself, it is rather something that is linked to your heart, and yours alone… whilst others can comprehend its value, only its true value is known to you. It is not something that can be sought by going out and actively finding or pursuing it… you cant go out and actively find love, sometimes you just have to let it or that person find you. You also find that in the process of waiting you find other things that help and heal you. They are bumps in an otherwise flawless road, and they seek to build your virtue of patience.
The second version of waiting runs in stark contrast to the first, whilst the first is driven by an emotion of love and positive anticipation, the second is perhaps fuelled by fear. Waiting for an answer to a question is normally considered an easy act, except if that answer carries the weight of your perfectly crafted world with it. The fear we all come to understand when waiting for a test result, the safe arrival of a loved one, the birth or departure of a soul into and out of this world all requires some form of waiting.
Over riding all of that is the waiting for an answer around our own mortality.
Today, I will slide back into the MRI tunnel at the LOC, I would have already participated in a battery of blood and neurological tests, I would’ve answered a few questions about my mental and physical state of mind. I would already have a puncture wound in my right arm from the contrast that will be streaming throughout my veins. My waiting will be over the second that magnetic resonance indicator switches on and it breaks into a number of intricately crafted sequences, that go through the different layers of my brain, pulling the contrast in different directions and patterns to project a detailed schematic of my brain to the panel of radiologists behind the safety glass.
Amidst layered mass of my brain, I know what they will be looking at. It is what I have been thinking and waiting on for a year, it holds the answer to all the questions I have asked since my last scan over a year ago… what has happened in the one year absence since they last took a look inside my head.
The scan will last for a better part of an hour, during which I will lie in wait, yet again, of what they will find. I will have a face mask on that limits the movement of my head inside the MRI tunnel, I will have earphones fastened to my ears to blur out the drumming and drone of the MRI. Most importantly I will be smiling, because I know that once again I have lived completely this past year. I have found happiness, friends, family, love, laughter, fun and life. Of course there have been moments of weakness where I retreat into myself to sure up the defences, but I cant fault myself for that… I can only make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Once the MRI scan is complete my time will slow down, I will then have to wait four days until I visit my neuro-oncologist the following week. A very long weekend will be beginning where I will question exactly what they found during my scan. That is the wait that I am fearful of, it wraps itself around your every thought in an attempt to facilitate negative thought.
I have known the full weight of fear behind waiting, but I have also learnt that waiting for the right thing is the far more rewarding.
