What Are We Waiting For?

“I don’t want just *any* fish. I want the blue-eyed, angel-faced David fish.”
-Frankie, Dream for an Insomniac

It was 1 am Sunday night/early Monday morning before the start of my last year of school. I sauntered slowly into the perennial college hangout, the Green Leafe, to close my tab I forgotten about several hours earlier. As I entered the dank, dark, and loud bar, I budged my way through the rumble and bustle of the forest of college students drinking, laughing, and talking their way through a reduced-priced beer night, aptly titled, “Mug Night.”

This being my last year, I wondered to myself how I was going to approach the last year of my college life. In particular, I had many questions and lingering issues (as usual) drifting away in my psyche as I signed the charge slip and tried to find a quiet and unass uming way out of the bar. Earlier, with my friends, I was waiting to see if any of my friends came out to the bar.

Earlier today, I talked to one of my friends who was wondering whether her boyfriend was truly the person for her, for the rest of her life. In our conversation, we discussed what she was waiting for before she and her boyfriend took the next and very important step in their relationship. She recounted and relished her experience with another person, one who she was not romantically interested in, but, in her own words, made her feel like a “princess.” She felt like she was missing something in life—something another person, a friend, or even another “friend” could fulfill.

In essence, she wondered, among other things, what was going to happen next? Was she waiting for her significant other to take the steps that he needed to make her feel confident and fulfilled in her relationship? On the other hand, was she waiting for someone who would give her this and more?

Earlier today, I also received a call from my relative who was contemplating a drastic change in their life—of the professional kind. Apparently, based on the draft essay she sent me the day before to review, she had always wanted to become a nurse—to be a caregiver in the utmost sense. As a woman, a mother, and a professional who was on the verge of entering her midlife, she decided that maybe there was another path to take, which had serious implications on her finances and her family, something most of my classmates do not have to consider when deciding on the oh-so serious question of what to do next. She was troubled not by the gravity of the career change, but rather, the validation by someone that she was, in fact, doing the right thing.

In all of these cases, there seemed to be a lingering question, which I too am wondering, what are we waiting for. In a Pandora’s box kind of way, by posing this question, we are too unmasking a simple question with almost no real answer: what do we want? Specifically, are we waiting for something that gives us what we want or even the thing we want itself?

The quote at the beginning of this entry is a response by one of the characters in my oft-quoted movie of the summer, Dream for an Insomniac. The character, Frankie, responds to the notion that “there are many fish in the sea” when she and her friends find out that the object of her affection has a very boring and plain girlfriend who is the antithesis of she is and what she stands for. To an extent, Frankie’s request is almost unrealistic—there is only ONE person she wants, and she will move and heaven and earth to attain it---to “circumnavigate his soul” one last time before she moves to another city (watch the movie for the denouement). To most of us living outside of the celluloid reality of the silver screen, however, that is almost simplistic, unthinkable, or even impossible.

For my friend, I asked her just that question—what do you want? Are you waiting for your boyfriend to change to be the man you want him to be or are you waiting for someone else to fulfill that role in your life? In the same light, I too, asked a similar question to my relative, albeit, in a different manner: you know what you want, but there are so many things to consider that you need to know whether or not this is worth the sacrifice your family must endure for the next year or so.

Each of them is presented with critical issues that undermine the rational foundation of their current lives. As I was waiting to close my tab, I looked around me and wondered why I was not out in the crowd, mingling with my classmates or drinking cheap beer and telling inane and sordid personal stories with my close-knit group of friends (who also left earlier with me)?

I guess, for me, I just was not interested in staying one minute longer. I knew that, outside of my group of friends, I was still on the lookout for someone “who got away” but who was not there, but I stopped waiting and left when I was tired and basically broke. More importantly, I decided that this year I was not waiting for anything in particular, to deny myself the fallacy of expectation—to encounter each and every event and to deal with it when it occurs: personally, academically, and professionally. If I plan and if I know my what my options will be, I can do the whole routine, knowing what will happen will happen because I made it that way. I can work the crowd and the routine as well as anyone else here at the Leafe, but not tonight and not this year.

So, in my usual “I don’t feel like talking to anyone anymore mood”, I quietly exited the bar through the side exit through the help of fellow college students who gladly opened the lock door in the bubbly mood of the night. Feeling the slight breeze on my body as I walked back through the twisted, dimly lit path back to my room, I reflected on this very question of what we all are waiting for in the end.

In life, we are presented with paths, options, opportunities, and people who seek to change our lives, for better or for worse. Like my friend, maybe we feel that we are not getting enough out of life, or like my relative, getting the life we want and truly deserve.
We follow the path given to us, but, at many opportune (or inopportune—take your pick) moments, we are confronted with the choice of choices and then we are dumfounded to the extent that we wait for something better to come along—either to salvage our current situation or to calm the restive spirit of our apprehensions and fears.

For Frankie, the path was clear—she wanted one thing. Nevertheless, we usually do not have such clarity at our disposal. Even then, he was not entirety of her existence, but rather, the perfect complement of her own existence as an independent person. As I finally approached the last stretch of my journey back from the Leafe, I suddenly realized why I was so moved last semester. It was not that I got what I wanted or that I received that gave me every thing I needed, I just stopped thinking about it (for a very short time). In that short, abbreviated moment in my life, I stopped waiting and started living—and everything in somehow worked out in the end (well, almost everything).

In the end, what we seek is not necessarily what we want or what will give us what want because sometimes it comes from within us. Not because we give ourselves what we want all the time and not only because of what others can give us, but rather, at a certain point, we cease our search for validation and answers. Hence, because of someone or something, we just stop waiting, which, in turn, means, we eventually stop wanting because inherently our sudden contentment eliminates the need to do either. In a negative sense, I think this is the reason behind complacency—we cease to find the reason or the drive to want anything more or better than what we have now. In a positive sense, we now have the security to act at will, focusing our energies on our battles, not our battle plans.

In essence, when we ask ourselves what we are waiting for, we are not waiting for the answer to our prayers (which we rarely get), but that someone or something that will make us stop waiting. Ultimately, from my experience, those two are mutually exclusive. In the end, we are waiting for that one thing that keeps from wondering and waiting—giving us what we need to eventually attain what we want and what we need. When the questions and the waiting period end, our superficial journey for what we want cedes to the beginning of the real journey within ourselves. In the movie, as simplistic as it may be, Frankie eventually finds solace and “everlasting” sleep in the arms of the one who does just that.