Waiting

Waiting is a central theme in my Search. Wait and see. It is not quite as passive as it sounds. Of course there is the negative or passive side of waiting that can lead to the emotional abyss: the depressive, absent, desolate, pathetic, lethargic side of waiting – where it seems like nothing much matters anymore. That is not the waiting I am talking about here. It is about the more healthy aspects of waiting, which at times may not feel so good either and cost us some patience. It is important to distinguish between the healthy and creative side of waiting and the more destructive side of waiting.

It is about letting what is, unfold and reveal itself, about letting things be: what is that is. It is about reflection, growing, maturing, ripening, the process of creating, about realizing that at the end of the day light and shadow merge. It is about not interfering and about restraining: not being in the way of the process that is happening. Trust that it will happen, it will emerge, what is that is.

The journey of waiting turns into a journey of discovery, of sitting with, meditation, revelation and creation. Discovering that it is less the outcome of the waiting that is important, more the waiting itself. Our attention focuses on different things than normal, sometimes seemingly unimportant details; ordinary things become more meaningful and seem to contain a message, things and situations take on additional and different meaning, priorities shift, awareness increases or is sharpened. Waiting creates room and space and openings. Waiting is a bit like meditating, it appears that nothing much happens, yet everything is different.

Some waiting we endure more easily than other waiting, but generally speaking waiting is viewed as a negative or distraction. And I totally understand, when my father was in open heart surgery recently and subsequently in the Intensive Care Unit for four days, there was many a time that I wanted to end that waiting. And yet, the week was filled with moments of reflection, thoughts, emotions, intimacy, silence, shifting priorities and insights while waiting. There are many other situations when we are more in control of how long we choose to wait, while making decisions for example. It is a bit counter cultural to wait and see, to take a bit longer to decide, to not know, or to know and not to act just yet, to be patient, to wait until “it” would reveal itself or the right moment comes. We don’t know if we will be here in the Netherlands for one or five more years or perhaps for the rest of our lives. We will see what will happen and we trust that at some point we will know, like when buying a house: you may go house hunting with a whole list of requirements and as soon as soon as you enter “your” house, you know despite the requirements.

Active waiting is searching.

To be continued...

Painting

This is a detail of a painting I created a number of years ago. The process of painting is a wonderful illustration of one aspect of what I learned during my Search: to embrace the unknown.  When I started this painting I knew what was to appear on the canvas.  Although it was an abstract painting, it was thought out, planned in terms of color and composition and all in all quite well organized, in some ways I was about to realize what I had dreamed of for this painting.  The ideas were important to get me started.  

The finished product looks very different than what I had in mind and not only because of my limited painting ability. Something else took place as well. When I thought a painting was done, my teacher encouraged me to continue, to let the painting paint itself.  The result was often that I started with one idea and ended up with a different outcome altogether, often richer, quite beautiful, more meaningful and mysterious as if the road to getting to the result was contained in the result. 

The process was not easy.  Crossing the space from the known to the unknown, from what was to what could become is one of letting go, giving up and saying goodbye.  The next brush stroke is an act of destruction as well as creation.  There is this terrifying moment when the painting is already destroyed and not yet newly created, and it is not easy to put oneself voluntarily in this moment, it is easier to hold on to the known.  This process of creation and destruction and creation is happening all the time.  Perhaps it is just 'growing', or 'evolving' or 'searching'… What is particularly important to me is the intention of destructing in order to create, the choice of leaving behind in order to embrace and always with this terrifying moment - that sometimes last years - of not knowing. I have left organizations, family, friends and loved one’s, ideas, languages, work, religion, habits, parts of my ego, realities, ways of searching even... and embraced the unknown.  All of this as part of the search and often with results that I could not have dreamed.

Georgia – a precious person in my life from the group relations world – alerted me to this story once, which I see as another illustration of the same process.  It comes from the Dr. Seuss’ book On Beyond Zebra.  It is about a boy who challenged his playmates to stretch their imagination beyond the traditional 26 letters of the alphabet – from A (Ape) to Z (Zebra) to create an extended alphabet. 

In the places I go there are things  that I see

That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z 

I’m telling you this ‘cause you’re one of my friends 

My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends

 To be continued…