Waiting at ease

Everything needs their sweet time, but can we wait at ease?

I have always been someone who rushes to get things done. My work bosses love me for that. In capitalism, which boss wouldn’t like a worker who is too eager to finish work fast? Even the construct of deadlines almost never bothered me. As a PhD student, at any given time, I am working against a deadline: research paper, grant, internship, fellowship, you name it. But still, even if a deadline is two months away, if I am able to do it in the next twenty minutes, I will just do it. Because why not.

While this could be a superpower when it comes to work, it has a dark side in the other parts of life. The manifestation of this autopilot mode of getting things done as soon as possible is the inability to wait. The inability to patiently give anything the time it takes. The deepest, almost carnal drive to rush everything to the finish line.

But lately, I have been realizing how time is not just something to race against, but rather an essential ingredient in many aspects of life. Just like meat in a good biriyani and yeast in a nice loaf of bread. They are irreplaceable in the first place, and the final product is never quite the same if they are rushed or replaced.

Just like cooking, I love the idea of painting and creating art. Yet, I have often found painting to be a struggle — because it takes time for paint to dry. And if it is oil paint, oh god, it will take an eternity. Every painting project of mine starts with a glorious vision, a canvas washed in rich shades, light slowly spilling across it. In that vision, the art is full of gradients, one blending beautifully into another. Seamless yet distinct shades.

When I start painting, I deploy all my rudimentary colour theory knowledge to come up with the most beautiful shades that I can imagine. But here is where the tricky part comes in. Each painting is a collection of fundamentally distinct layers. These layers come together, slowly, until an image begins to take shape.

After painting each layer, one inevitably has to wait for the paint to dry. But me being me, I would do all kinds of science experiments to make the paint dry quicker. And of course, before I realise it, the autopilot takes over and I paint another layer over the already wet one, resulting in blobs of ugly-looking shades. But hey, it is art anyway. Right?

The point is that, just like painting, everything nice and beautiful in life requires time. Be it time to brew, time to simmer, time to ferment, or time to grow. Maybe this is true for love and relationships too. No matter how much attention one might show another person, or how deeply one might like them, it takes time for love to develop between two people. Just like how a small sapling needs its own sweet time to sink its roots into dark soil before it can grow into a mighty tree.

However, for people like me, the waiting can be painful, not just in love but in every aspect of life. Growing up, I thought life would be just like Tamil movies, where everything transforms in a five-minute song sequence. The hero goes from rags to riches over the course of a song. He builds a business empire, proves his nemesis wrong, makes his parents proud, marries the love of his life, maybe even organises a revolution. Basically, life is all good after that five-minute sequence. But as I am growing older, I am realising that real life is marked not by songs, but by long moments of waiting.

There is a beautiful saying, by Annie Dillard, that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Similarly, I think the experience of life is defined by these moments of waiting, and by how we feel in those moments. Is the heart anxious during these moments, or is it at ease? These moments of waiting are unavoidable, and maybe even necessary, for having more vibrant shades in the canvas of life.

While I would have loved to pride myself on being someone whose heart is always at ease, I have come to a bittersweet acceptance that I am not. Lately, I have been learning to fill these moments of waiting with things that help me feel a little more at ease. Be it walking mindlessly, or writing, or cooking, or just watching people in the streets. In fact, I wrote this piece as a way to get some respite from that inevitable agony of waiting. I do not mean that in a negative way. I think it is what it is. Waiting can be painful. And if you are reading this to pass time while waiting for something of your own, I hope you too find a bit of that much-deserved respite.

I feel like everything in life, be it falling in love, building a company, or repairing a relationship with a friend, is like growing a house plant. They do need attention and the right conditions to grow, but we cannot really force them to grow quicker or better. They need their sweet time. I think time is often the magic ingredient, the quiet drying between layers of paint and the slow simmer that cannot be rushed. All we can do is wait. Hopefully, at ease.