The End of Pointless Waiting

The End of Pointless Waiting

Our flight back from our recent holiday to England was delayed by an hour and a half, and we'd already arrived super early because I'd timed my youngest daughter's nap with the long drive there. We wouldn't get home until the middle of the night. The Manager would have been in full panic mode: What are we going to do with the kids for hours and hours? This is a disaster. We're trapped here with nothing to do.

But I headed her off early.

Instead of treating those hours as time to endure until our flight, I stayed in the present moment. I saw every moment in front of me as that moment—not as a means to getting somewhere else.

What Unfolded

We went for coffee. Played with the suitcases. Walked around looking at things—I didn't even feel the need to start taking out the toys I'd brought. We stood in queues and talked. Went for dinner when we felt hungry. Bought a book and read it together, sprawled across airport chairs. Then it was time to get on the airplane. More delays, more talking. I nursed my youngest to sleep on the plane, her warm weight against me as we finally lifted off into the night

What could have been built up as hours of waiting and impatience was just our lives passing, one moment at a time. It was wonderful. It flowed so naturally.

The Revelation

That's when it hit me: there's no such thing as pointless waiting.

There's just life happening, and The Manager's insistence that some moments don't count. That some experiences are just obstacles between us and where we think we should be.

I started seeing it everywhere. From small scale waiting like waiting for the train. For someone to arrive. For work to finish. And big scale waiting like waiting for the weekend, for the next holiday. For the next house, job, child. The Manager turns all these moments into frustration because she's always wanting to be somewhere else, somewhen else.

She escapes into phones, into daydreaming, into planning, into anything that avoids the feeling of being exactly where we are.

A Different Way of Being

I have a very different relationship with time now. I inhabit the present moment more than I used to, instead of resisting it. Waiting for the train doesn't feel like waiting at all. Sometimes I listen to music or a book, but mostly I just am with myself in that moment. Watching people without judgment, instead there is a feeling of being there together.

If I'm outside, I watch the clouds, feel the sun or the rain or the cold. Listen to the birds.

It feels strange to write this out, but it feels like each moment is precious in itself. Not as a stepping stone to something better, but because it is my life. I don't need to distract myself from it. I don't need to wish I was somewhere else. Even when it's seen as "boring", "time wasted" or any other lables The Manger uses.

What Changed

The Manager used to turn waiting into suffering—making every delay a problem to solve, every queue a frustration to endure. She'd have me scrolling my phone, checking the time obsessively, mentally rehearsing all the ways the delay would mess up our evening.

But that day at the airport, I chose differently. I chose to see those hours not as obstacles between me and where I wanted to be, but as the actual texture of our day. Our children playing with suitcases. The conversations in queues. The shared book. My baby falling asleep in my arms.

That's not waiting. That's living.

Now I notice how often The Manager used to rob me of these in-between moments—all the time spent getting from one place to another, all the pauses and delays and transitions that make up so much of life. She'd have me treating them as inconveniences rather than recognizing them as the very fabric of our days.

There's such freedom in realizing that there is nowhere else I need to be than exactly where I am. Even in an airport departure lounge at midnight. Even waiting for a delayed train. Even in the ordinary spaces between planned activities.

This is my life. All of it. Every single moment, not just the destinations.

How much of your life do you spend waiting for it to begin?