Do you feel like you’re stuck in a holding pattern – circling and circling and circling but not quite yet ready to land? Something is coming around the bend, but its arrival remains out of reach? Perhaps it’s tied to a new phase of life (graduation, wedding, birth of a child/grandchild, new job, launch of your company, retirement…). Or maybe it’s a big event (interview, vacation, race, first date…). You know it’s coming. You’ve done all you can to prepare, and now all you can do is… wait.
In the meantime, how do we respond? How do we wait? Ignore it and busy ourselves with various tasks? Try to control the outcome by engrossing ourselves in (likely marginally effective at best) activities? Do we cycle through a version of our self-created purgatory, allowing our mind to construct various potential outcomes between heaven to hell?
Maybe there’s another option that exists within that very “meantime.” Author Jenny O’Dell flipped my view of this idea of the concept upside down, noting “In the meantime, you wait with your ear to the ground for patterns of vibration that will never repeat themselves… You look for an opening… take it… and don’t look back.”
Hold on – this occurs in the meantime? It is during this meantime when we elevate our senses? Listen ever more closely? Tune into previously unnoticed “patterns of vibration that will never repeat themselves”? Admittedly, my tendency is instead to view “in the meantime” more like “in the meaningless time.” It’s the time before the thing that matters. The silence between the sentences. The pause separating lightning and thunder. But maybe we’re missing it. Perhaps the true magic is in that meantime. John Lennon’s memorable lyrics (gleaned from Allen Saunders) “life is what happens when we’re busy making plans” delivers a similar message. Might we be missing the point waiting for the punchline?
What if today – for just 24 hours – we tried on a new lens: a meantime lens. Without minimizing the excitement surrounding the big event up ahead, we examine the ground on which we currently stand. Not just a glance – a deep dive; bringing to light previously unrecognized opportunities and discoveries. Maybe it involves pausing to appreciate a new food, noticing the powerfully graceful flight of a hawk, tuning into a friend’s unique gifts, the sound of a gentle wind rustling through the trees, or that quite voice inside that provides a glimpse of the divine in this singular moment.
Landmark events in our lives are valuable, focusing our energy, effort and resources in a singular direction. But perhaps in the meantime…