Waiting isn’t my strong suit. I was the kid who stalked the packages under the Christmas tree, shaking them for some clue to their contents. More than once, I unwrapped them on the sly in my bedroom while my mother was otherwise occupied. After determining what was inside, I would carefully tape the gift wrap back in place. Knowing that detail work has never been my forte, I’m certain my parents were on to me, but they never confronted me about it.
Now that I am older, shouldn’t I have learned how to wait better? Well, unfortunately the answer is that I have not. In this time of year, when waiting is the watchword, I have always been mildly anxious. Maybe it is the shorter days or the sense of urgency brought on by the expectations of others. Make an appetizer, buy some gifts. It’s just the monotony of waiting for the holiday to get here, if only to get it over with.
This year, however, there is a substantial amount of dread mixed in with my anxiety. Waiting has assumed a new, dark cloak. Like many other Americans, I find myself dreadfully awaiting the next horrific attack from domestic or foreign terrorists. Even as I write this, the Los Angeles school system has shuttered its doors for the day due to a threat to kill children. New York City schools received a similar threat, although it was in a form that lead officials to conclude that the message was nothing more than a hoax. Their doors remained open, although staff and law enforcement officials were instructed to be vigilant and ever-watchful.
The monotony of waiting like this, as in “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” amps up my anxiety exponentially. For example, some loved ones and I traveled to Las Vegas last weekend to see operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli in concert. What should have been a glorious experience was marred by the wanderings of my subconscious mind. Would or could terrorists strike here? Would or could we survive? Bocelli was spectacular, as you might expect, but the air seemed a bit sweeter to me as we left Sin City behind us.
President Obama tells us not to be afraid, because if we allow our actions to be altered by our fears, the evil that is terrorism will have won. I can buy that in theory some of the time. But mostly, I feel afraid. I don’t want to die a senseless death at the hand of some radical zealot. Nobody I know does.
I’ve been doing some reading about waiting while I wait. It has some interesting aspects. If you are of the Christian faith, for instance, this time of waiting is supposed to be filled with a quiet but joyful anticipation. The time of Advent, which begins four weeks prior to Christmas, is the beginning of the liturgical year. The theory is that you are waiting and preparing for the birth of the god who will usher you through the rest of the year. There is an abundance of suggestion and advice offered in religious literature about how to wait for the coming celebration in ways that enhance the soul while quieting the body. I find this only mildly instructive.
Turning to the field of psychology for help wasn’t particularly productive. In my search, I found only one expert who had studied how to wait effectively. Her name is Kate Sweeney, and she is associate professor at the University of California, Riverside. With her colleagues, Sweeney has developed a “model for uncertainty navigation.” The type of uncertainty she focuses on however is news, for example, that you failed the bar exam. Not the uncertainty of when the next attack and loss of human life will occur (emphasis on the word “will”).
I read somewhere that we have choices when we are forced to wait, whether what we await is pleasant or disastrous. We can be passive, or we can act with human agency. I interpret that to mean that we can use our heads and our hearts to guide us in waiting in ways that make sense to us. It seems, then, that it’s left to me to figure out how to deal with the fear and the anxiety around terrorism that are currently gnawing at my psyche.
I’ll share what I’ve come up with for myself. If you are suffering from terrorist angst like I am, feel free to borrow what makes sense to you. I make no guarantees about the effectiveness of my strategies. In fact, by the time you read this, I might have abandoned them entirely. But at the moment, they represent my best thoughts.
I have decided that I don’t know enough about the Middle East, the Muslim faith, or the development of radical Islam. Therefore, I have enrolled in a free online course through Coursera (you can Google it to see their other offerings). The title of my course is “The Emergence of the Modern Middle East.” There are several other online courses available. This one simply caught my attention first.
I find that I need to carefully monitor my consumption of news. I used to be an NPR and CNN junkie. Although this might sound like I am woefully late to the game, I now realize that media outlets don’t have answers: they simply report the same paltry facts over and over. My brain and my heart become worn down by hearing the same sadness repeatedly. I need to — and now do — walk away.
I am constantly on the prowl for opportunities to add a little bit of good in this, my corner of the world. I volunteer at the Utah Food Bank and the Soup Kitchen at Grace Episcopal Church. The other day, I helped an elderly woman whose cart had spilled over in Wal-Mart. I try to greet strangers with a smile and a sweet word. You may do this as a matter of practice, and I’d like to think that I did too. These days, though, I’m upping my game. My goal is to leave each and every human encounter with a richness that didn’t exist before we came together.
I’ve turned to reading the writings of and about figures in recent history whose wisdom gives me comfort. Dag Hammarskjold, for instance, or Pope Francis, Eleanor Roosevelt, or the late Gilda Radner. More about that in a moment.
Counterbalancing mass murder is no small task, of course, nor can it be done on a hit-or-miss basis, if at all. And maybe, in the long run, the steps that I’ve taken are ultimately selfish and self-centered. You could argue that I’m out to preserve my own sense of well-being, after all. But here’s the deal. I can’t come up with anything better to help me through the wait until the next tragedy strikes. And we know it will.
If adding a little positivity to the web of energy that connects all of us to one another is my personal destiny, so be it.
And when I get particularly low, I remind myself of Radner’s over-the-top character on Saturday Night Live. She played the brash and often tactless consumer affairs reporter, Roseanne Roseannadanna, who begin her segment responding to a letter from an audience member but would soon digress into a monologue that became more and more outrageous with each passing moment. She concluded her performance each week with the following statement: “Well, Jane. It just goes to show you. It’s always something — if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”
In no way do I mean this to minimize the gravity of the issue, but Roseanne makes me chuckle. And we all need a chuckle now and then in these days of waiting.
thank you for the perspective