The Art Of Waiting

A Lesson In Patience

There’s a lesson in waiting which has shown me there is indeed progress in all my years of actively wanting to learn, grow and evolve all while learning to slow down.

The Low Lighthouse and Beacon by John Constable

The juxtaposition is this, in my younger years I used to believe life was a race against time. That perspective of years under my belt was missing after all.

Every morning, I'd wake up with an internal stopwatch ticking inside of my head. Decades of insomnia made the tick louder it seemed. I’d do a virtual calculation of the moments between where I was and where I thought I should be. My fingers drumming impatiently as web pages loaded all too slowly irrespective of the “high speed” internet, my foot tapping restlessly under the wobbly table at the overpriced cafe I was frequenting in search of finding solace as I struggled to drown out all the noise just to write. All the while my mind racing ahead to next week, next month, next year—always forward eluding the here and now.

This obsession with speed wasn't just about minor inconveniences. It was about the bigger picture: career milestones, personal achievements, life goals, big things. I watched as former colleagues from my news days posted their successes on social media, each announcement feeling like a counter punch to my own countdown clock of my ambitions. Why hadn't I gotten as far as I had imagined I’d already be? Why wasn't my creative project finished? Even better question - why did I have 7 half finished books just looming in the ethers? Why did everything seem to move so slowly when I was pushing so hard to charge forward?

It took years of frustration—and more importantly, years of observation—contemplation—to understand a fundamental truth: time moves at its own pace, regardless of how hard we push against it. Like trying to force a flower to bloom by yanking on its petals, my attempts to accelerate success often led to missed opportunities and half-formed achievements.

The turning point came through an unexpected source: my mother's garden. During one particularly hard and what seemed like never-ending period of my life, I spent a weekend helping her tend to her vegetables. As we worked, she pointed to a tomato plant spilling over with green fruit. "You can't rush these," she said, gently turning a tomato in her hand. "They'll ripen when they're ready, not when you want them to." She went on to explain how each vegetable in her garden had its own timeline—peas in spring, tomatoes in summer, squash in fall. Fighting against these natural rhythms would only lead to bitter harvests or failed veggies.

There and then I had an epiphany.

This simple wisdom began to seep into other parts of my life. I started to recognize that my best work happened not in the frantic rush, but when I kicked back and let ideas come to me naturally. Projects I had pushed through quickly needed revision, while those I just gave time to breathe turned out more polished and profound. Relationships I tried to fast-track fizzled out, probably for the best, while those I let develop organically grew deeper and more meaningful.

Time, I've learned, is not an adversary to be beaten or conquered, but an ally especially in the creative process. Each delay holds its own lesson, each period of waiting a gift. The promotion I thought was taking too long fell by the wayside for good reason giving me time to develop crucial skills. The creative project that seemed to drag on opened space for innovation. Even the long lines at grocery stores became opportunities for unexpected conversations or moments of reflection when I let the urge to force things go.

Now, when I feel impatience rising up—that urge to push things to move faster than their natural rhythm—I remind myself of my mom’s garden. I think of those green tomatoes slowly reddening in the sun, of roots growing unseen beneath the soil, of the quiet, persistence of time that cannot be rushed but can be trusted.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that all waiting is productive or that you should just be passive in chasing your dreams and getting after your goals. Rather, it's about honoring the difference between active patience—the kind that involves preparation, practice, and persistent effort—and the frantic insistence that comes from refusing to accept natural timing. It's about understanding that some growth is invisible until it’s ready to be seen, and that this invisibility doesn't make it any less real or valuable.

In a world that demands more and more instant gratification, patience can feel like a radical act. It's an acknowledgment that not everything worthwhile can be microwaved, downloaded, or sped up. Some things—especially the best things—take time: expertise, building trust, and cultivating wisdom to name a few. You can't rush it any more than you can rush the seasons or the sunrise.

Looking back, I see now that the impatience of those younger years wasn't really about time at all. It was about trust—trusting in the process, trusting in my own development, trusting in the natural unfolding of life's chapters.

The lesson here is this - learning patience hasn't made time speed up, but it’s made the wait more purposeful, more peaceful, and ultimately, more rewarding. After all, the sweetest fruit is the one that's given the time it needs to ripen.