The Waiting Room
I have to remind myself the stillness is actually the quiet space that holds the thing you’re moving toward. Without it, the arrival wouldn’t feel like anything.
Sometimes my mind feels like it’s stuck in a waiting room.
Not loud, not urgent, not even uncomfortable, just still. Like I’m sitting in a chair that isn’t mine, flipping through thoughts the way you flip through old magazines. The kind of place where the walls hum with fluorescent light and you can hear the faint buzz of something mechanical that never quite stops.
I sit there, restless but quiet, knowing I can’t leave yet, but not entirely sure what I’m even waiting for.
The strange part is how familiar it feels, as if I’ve been here many times before without ever realizing it.
It’s not panic. It’s not peace either. It’s that awkward in-between, where nothing is happening but you know something’s coming.
You’re just there. The stillness has its own weight, and sometimes it feels heavier than action itself. My mind starts to create stories in the silence, spinning out little scenarios just to fill the air.
And yet, the longer I sit with it, the more I realize the in-between is its own kind of story, one that forces me to notice how often I skip over these spaces without acknowledging them.
I notice it most when I drift.
When the week hasn’t fully started but it hasn’t ended either. When I’m caught between wanting to move forward and wanting to stay where I am.
The waiting room shows up in the pauses I didn’t choose, like when I’m standing in line, or when I check the clock and realize the day is crawling. These are the moments that feel the most frustrating, because I can’t speed them up and I can’t rewind them.
The only option is to sit inside them and accept that time won’t bend just because I want it to. That awareness makes me uncomfortable, but it also feels honest in a way I can’t ignore.
It feels endless sometimes. Like the clock on the wall has stopped and I’m the only one who cares. Everyone else around me seems fine with the stillness, like they understand something I don’t.
And maybe the clock is right. Maybe the pause is the point. The waiting room isn’t broken or stuck, it’s working exactly as it should. The fact that it feels endless might just be proof that I’m supposed to notice it, to sit with the ache of not knowing when it will end, and to recognize that not everything has to move at my pace.
Waiting has a purpose.
It’s the quiet space that holds the thing you’re moving toward. Without it, the arrival wouldn’t feel like anything. The pause is what gives weight to what comes next. And if it feels like you’re in the waiting room, it’s because there’s something worth waiting for.
The chair you’re sitting in, the hum of the lights, the silence pressing in, all of it is part of the process, a reminder that the stillness has meaning, even if you can’t see it yet.
Your reflection on the waiting room made me wonder...
Do you think the weight of stillness comes more from our resistance to it, or from the stories we create to fill the silence?
I was in that same waiting room today, Jake. I understand. Finally, I was able to move and take a glorious walk, but it would have been just as easy to remain languid.