Can we simply wait?

There’s something wonderful in the moments we don’t understand. It can be a bit of conversation, a moving image, or even just a thought. This week, I’ve been thinking about waiting—waiting for something to happen, for understanding, for serenity. I always feel a tension to hurry through the waiting, as if ambiguity was somehow a threat.

After ending on a startlingly inconclusive note in 1991, Twin Peaks returned in 2017 to extend the story for one more season. Yet audiences who’d hoped for a traditional ending were again denied one. Again, Lynch seemed to be imploring them to stop seeking clarity and embrace the moments whose overarching connections are far less obvious. What mattered to him, it appears, was the experience itself: the feelings they evoked, the uncanny images whose significance were difficult to parse yet impossible to forget. David Lynch didn’t want to leave his viewers with an interpretation, but with something more visceral—like the taste of cherry pie and a cup of hot coffee, black as midnight on a moonless night.

~ Emma Stefansky, from David Lynch Captured the Appeal of the Unknown

I watched Twin Peaks in real time on ‘ol broadcast TV. It bent my brain in the best way possible. I was reading that article, thinking it was simply interesting. Until I got to that first sentence above—there’s a 3rd season?! Excuse me while I run to whatever streaming service I must join . . .

I have often regretted acting impulsively when I am feeling angry or frustrated. Now, when I feel that familiar urge to respond defensively or say things I don’t really mean or bang out a wounded response via email or text, I wait. I force myself to breath, take a step back, and wait to respond. Just an hour or two or an overnight retreat makes a world of difference. And if all else fails, I try to obey this message I got in a fortune cookie: Avoid compulsively making things worse.

~ Debbie Millman

There are so many variations to that. For example, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Sometimes—as I’m frantically digging a hole—I think, “would somebody please wrest this shovel from my hands!” Then I remember: I’m somebody.

What, I can experience an entire trip to the mall without sighing, grimacing or silently cursing? I can sit through an entire red light without fidgeting? I can make (or miss) my connecting flight without losing my shit even once? Can I live my whole life this way?

We can, if we’re willing to give time, as a habit. Nothing else makes sense really—it’s just experimenting with a willingness to live in reality as though there’s nowhere else to be. (Not that there ever was.)

~ David Cain, from How to Be Patient

Occasionally I get the urge to attend a week-long, silent meditation retreat. (For example, Vipassanā retreats.) Why? Because sometimes I experience small periods of blissful serenity. I’d particularly like to be able to go there on a more regular basis. It seems to me that spending about 10 days doing nothing but meditating in silence would be a delightfully mind-altering experience.

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

~ Eden Phillpotts

Rarely, but with increasing frequency, I find myself enjoying sitting perfectly still. Doing perfectly nothing. Paying attention to the moment instead of being completely obliterated by an endless torrent of thoughts. Eventually a thought which I deem worthy enough arises urging me to go do this, or check on that, and I rise from my glimpse of serenity. I always wonder what would happen if I just kept thinking: That’s not quite worth getting up for just now, I’ll wait for the next thought.

You have to wait— you just have to wait and see. It’s not always the right time to give feedback.

~ Cristina Latici, from Insight with Cristina Latici

What makes a great movement coach, and how do they balance structure, intuition, and individual learning styles to help students progress? Teaching movement is as much about reading people as it is about teaching physical skills.

Let me be clear that no part of me idealizes the bygone agony of waiting three weeks for a letter from your lover to cross the Atlantic—a letter that might never arrive from a lover who might be dead by the time it does arrive. But let me also be clear that, in another century or two, if humanity is wise enough to survive and reconsider its compulsions, posterity will look back on us gobsmacked that we put ourselves through the agony of the three pulsating dots.

~ Maria Popova

I’ve lately been on a bender reading many of these really interesting, really short, interviews with countless people. Most of them don’t particularly interest me. “But wait,” you’re thinking, “those two sentences seem contradictory.” I’m glad you asked about that!

What I’m looking for, in both fiction and documentary, are moments that you weren’t expecting, and which the audience don’t feel prepared for, moments that are candid, like something that just happened in front of the camera, and it’s not going to happen again. Those are the moments you live for as a documentary maker.

~ Kevin Macdonald, from Kevin MacDonald – The Talks

You see, once I know that there’s some large body of work and it’s pretty uniform, then I wonder: Why should I think that the ones I like are the really good ones? Since the work is (pretty) uniform, maybe they’re all really good (or pretty good, at least) and the reason I don’t like most of them… is me. If I sift through the work am I identifying the good ones? Or am I just reinforcing, via confirmation bias, my narrow view points

If I wanted to grow—growth often being uncomfortable, especially when it comes to shifting one’s own perspectives—maybe I should intentionally read the ones that I think aren’t that good. Maybe I should be seeking out things which I’m misjudging, and that would by definition be the things I think aren’t that good.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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