I woke up terribly late and rushed through to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, but over this six-step stretch, I slowed down and began to laugh instead. I made coffee and carried it to the desk while smelling it; it smelled like a potpourri of hope and happiness. In these days, when none of me is hidden, when all of who I am is out and about, and there is no schism between who I want to be and who I am, I see life for what it is: it is an exercise in patience. I suppose all we do here is about waiting, and one must wait patiently. I have waited for so much; I have seen it come to pass in odd, mysterious ways. Like a lonely house in a field that no one visits until someone stumbles upon it on a rainy day, every wait has a purpose. I have waited for so much more; I have had my heart sink deeper than the heaviest rock you can toss into the sea, but all things wash ashore eventually. I have found myself stranded on the beach alone and tired, waiting still. For all the wait we have in life, we are often in an unfounded rush. Even if you oversleep, there is still the rest of the day to go through. If you are patient and if you look around, much can still happen during the day.
And with this thought, I sat at the desk and began writing. Just then, it occurred to me that the coffee was still hot; there was still time. There was still time, and life was just beginning to unfold. It was a beautiful day—the sun was still out, and the clouds had slowly begun to engulf it. The sky had not yet turned grey, so you could still see the hills, and the birds flew about casually, no sense of urgency in the flaps of their wings. Of course, I had missed some hours of all this, but there was still enough of it left for things to happen. That is all life becomes in the end: waiting for things to happen and then, if you’re patient enough, responding in kind.