There’s a beautiful quote in The Art of Learning by chess player and martial artist competitor Josh Waitzkin where he says, “Not only do we have to be good at waiting, we have to love it. Because waiting is not waiting, it is life. Too many of us live without fully engaging our minds, waiting for that moment when our real lives begin.”
Groceries paid for, I push my cart outside the grocery store and pull it up next to me as I sit at the end of the stone wall that makes a large square around a selection of greenery. Facing the sun, waiting for my friend to finish her shopping, I start to take out the book I’ve brought with me. Mask still on, I’m distanced enough from the man who sits further down the wall. He’s working on a coffee and a muffin.
“Can I ask what the Z stands for on your mask?” he asks.
“It says Zmata. It’s my friend’s gym in California,” I say. The Z is the most prominent part of the logo’s design. The letters saying Judo Wrestling Brazilian Jiu Jitsu have faded with washing and wear.
“California would be a nice place to be right now,” he says. I assume he means because of the weather so we chat about the weather for a bit. Today’s weather is pleasant. It’s not raining at any rate. The sun is mostly out and the temperature is coat-wearing cool, but I have on a coat. I think about, but don’t mention, the Scandinavian saying, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.”
From the weather we move on to holiday talk. He tells me his son, daughter-in-law, and grandson live in Portland. Not too far away. Close enough to spend holidays with.
From topic to topic, we chitchat on and on, like real people out in the real world interacting with each other. Meanwhile, people come in and out of the store. Store workers sanitize the returned carts. A person walks by with a large, dark honey colored dog. The sun comes all the way out from behind a cloud and I turn up my face toward it. The man tells me about how when he was a kid his family had had a dog who was let out to roam the neighborhood and only came home to be fed. “I thought of that because of the man who just walked by with his dog,” he explains. “Things are different.”
I tell him a story about when I was a kid and how I got to roam free with siblings, neighbors, and friends. Then after we silently muse over the current way of things, things are different, I wonder if I should have asked him to talk more about his childhood and life rather than tell my own tale. It’s a way to carry a conversation forward, but I’m out of practice.
“They usually have tables and chairs out here,” he says, indicating the open area in front of the store. I know this. I’ve sat there before. But for now, because of the weather or because of the governor’s lockdown edict, they’re gone. “It’ll be nice when things go back to the way they used to be.”
“Yes, it will,” I say, politely.
What if they never do? I think. And what if that’s the point? That we adapt. We change. We make things better rather than worse as we go along. We take the lessons we’ve learned and apply them. Nothing ever goes exactly back to the way it was. And yet, here we are, waiting for real life to begin again, waiting for things to go back to the way they were before.
Willy Wonka said, “You have to go forward to go back.” And that’s another thing I think but don’t say as the man gets up, bids me good day, takes his empty muffin paper and coffee cup to the trashcan, and goes off to spend the rest of his day however he will.
I open up my book as I sit waiting for my friend. Living my life, however imperfectly, while I’m waiting. Doing my best to remember that I can’t wait around for my life to begin again because that would be to miss out on life. Even if what’s in front of me is hard. Sometimes it is. But here I am, doing my best to remember that waiting is life. Doing the best that I can. And life is beautiful.
