The Way Waiting Grows

Day after day, you sit gazing down the road in restless anticipation, having gathered a world of tenderness and a sky full of love for someone who doesn't actually want any of it—or whose feelings and emotions for someone else evaporated long ago. So none of this is new to them anymore. They no longer have the mind to pay attention to you. Or perhaps under the weight of years, all those feelings have simply ebbed away!

Day after day, moment after moment, you've bundled all your longings into hope for someone who might come someday—but that day will never actually arrive, those hopes will never be fulfilled the way you imagine. The cake you've never cut in this life, dreaming of cutting it together with that special person on your birthday—that cake will never be cut. Perhaps they despise cake, or maybe they consider it irreligious or unnecessary!

Everything you've saved up for them, all the small pleasures you've never allowed yourself while dreaming of a life together—day after day you've deprived yourself of these joys, joys you could have given yourself, but instead you've hoarded them all in your yearning to share your happiness with someone—that person simply won't care about any of it. Whether you accept it or not, they'll actually toss aside these needs of yours, or they'll never think about these small happinesses of yours. Life is life-like, not like your imaginings.

Does thinking about all this hurt? Good, if it does. Everything is difficult to accept at first, but later time applies its balm to that pain, and then those broken, battered hurts are no longer felt the same way. Learn to accept what isn't there, what won't happen. Truth isn't always pleasant, doing the right thing doesn't always bring happy results. But in the end, truth is what keeps us alive. Truth is happier than happiness.

So before you suffer, fulfill these small desires and dreams yourself, don't deprive yourself waiting for someone else, because when you hurt yourself, no one but you feels that pain. No one else will fulfill all your desires—not even if they could, because they won't want to; don't ask why they won't want to—that's their personal matter. Don't bind yourself to anyone in waiting, because time that passes never returns. Or what seems terribly precious to you today might have no value at all ten years from now.

Time changes everything. However the present may be, learn to live today with all of the present's emptiness, failure, and incompleteness; learn first to enjoy what little you have. Otherwise, after a while you'll see that evening has fallen, but no one has come with a lamp in hand; you'll see that even the last leaf of life's last spring has fallen, but no one has come.

No one comes—that person from our imaginary world doesn't actually exist anywhere. You'll have to create that person yourself, but when you finish creating that person according to your own heart's desire, you'll find that your old wishes, regrets, and needs are nowhere to be found. They've either died or changed. Remember, the new always takes the place of the old. The new comes only to uproot the old. So don't carelessly lose these present moments waiting for some imaginary person. Already too much time has been lost. Shake off all dreams of waiting and anticipation and learn to enjoy today's life fully. In waiting, only more waiting grows.