I do a lot of waiting these days. It looks like I’m just sitting, I know, but it’s the space in between the very important thing to the next very important thing. Like the space between lab draws and results, so I can swing into action to advocate for not missing the important change in the numbers. Or the space in between delivering the Cathflo and pulling on the line to see if it’s still occluded. Or the space between recovery and room assignment. If you are wondering, it’s always cold in this space and the chairs are always hard and the food sucks. Sometimes, there’s a window, though, so that’s something.
It’s a space where I can’t really let my brain focus on anything else, but it can’t really wander away. It’s like the waiting room, but there’s no HGTV, so you have to find something to do with your thoughts in the space.
Sometimes I let my thoughts just wander and other times I watch what’s going on around me. Today, there was a window and outside the window there were squirrels. It was not your average Snow White squirrel scene, no, no. These were squirrels on a mission, a deadline, if you will. In Texas, the weather has finally turned chilly enough to tell the plants and earth and animals that things are about to change.
Get ready and hurry, the frost in the air demands. It’s time. It’s time to adjust, it’s time to prepare, it’s time to embrace the resources you have left with exacting efficiency. Winter is not waiting for you. You must ready yourself for winter.
Squirrels aren’t the only creatures that get ready for winter. I can see leaves from the window, too. They too are embracing the change that is inevitable. Brillant yellows and fiery reds and blaring oranges, the leaves practically belt out their farewell aria to the summer without a hint of melancholy.
Plants and animals don’t fight the change in season. In fact, they embrace it. They don’t act like its summer when the air bites and the earth gets hard. That would be foolishness, actually, and not just petty folly but the kind that leads to peril. The squirrels no longer lightly frolic in the trees, they scramble with preparations. Leaves don’t shimmer broad and open, they contract and shrivel.
And, for what?
What happens next?
The leaves turn brown and get scraped up into piles and blown away and the acorns disappear deep in the rock-hard earth. The squirrels? Where are they? And everything grows dark and silent.
It’s depressing. Desperate, even if you don’t know what’s to come.
It’s the waiting space. The space between.
The space of holy preparedness.
This is the space where you rest and prepare for what is to come.
It’s also the space where you grow. You get better in the waiting space if you don’t fight it.
And then, the seasons change.
And it’s spring.
It’s a beautiful space, the waiting space, or it can be, if you do it right. When you are in the waiting space, which is usually a space of not knowing what will happen next, there are three things you can do to maximize the unknown.
Acknowledge and accept the presence of change (even if it’s unpleasant). Listen, friend, if it is winter, you just look silly running around in your bikini when you need to get serious and put on a damn coat. Refusing to acknowledge that things have changed and that things are hard doesn’t make the hard thing go away; it just puts you at risk. If it’s winter, accept it and put on your coat.
Inventory your resources. Take stock of what you have available to use during the hard times and determine what really matters to you. Remember, this is not guaranteed to be a time of plenty. We are talking ration coupons and paint on pantyhose, or only three squares of Charmin per bathroom trip, depending on your generation. This is the time to dig deep into what you know is available to you. Think about your resilience, your creativity, your resourcefulness, your adaptability. Maybe the sun isn’t going to shine for a while, and you can’t get a great tan right now, but what else can you do? You’ve got great resources, don’t forget it!
Channel your energy. Speaking of scant resources, that means we need to think about doing only the things that really matter. If energy and resources are low, you can’t afford to waste anything on actions that don’t meet your goals. Don’t be the squirrel that is doing flying tree limb back flips goofing off or running from tree to tree not focusing on the MOST IMPORTANT THING. It’s comical when you think about it from the squirrel perspective, but this is how humans approach seasons of uncertainty that really hurts us. We either ignore the important things that we need to be doing in favor of things that might be more comfortable but are far less productive, or we lose our minds and panic, expending all our energy but not accomplishing the things that make a difference. Don’t be the squirrel who runs around all fall and starves in the winter. Be the squirrel that finds the nuts.
It turns out, the squirrels and the leaves, they know what we all need to know. They know that winter will always come. Not yet have the mightiest of oaks or the scurriest of squirrels determined how to skip winter, much like the biggest and smartest of humans have not yet determined how to opt out of the inevitability of heartache. It’s what you do to prepare for the coming winter and how you wait for the coming spring that really makes the difference, because, just like winter, Spring always comes again.
