The waiting place
The waiting place, from ‘Oh the places you’ll go’, by Dr Seuss
As I wait at home for this stomach bug to pass through my system, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated. For today’s post I’m going to be looking at some words of wisdom from Dr Seuss:
The Waiting Place ...
... for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,
or a plane to go or the mail to come,
or the rain to go or the phone to ring,
or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
As a teacher I’ve read this book a couple of times to different cohorts of students. Each time I highlighted The Waiting Place (TWP) as a point of discussion, but - alas - the poor kids don’t really get it. They take it literally. ‘Oh yes,’ they say, ‘Waiting for buses is so boring!,’ or ‘I always have to wait ages to get my hair cut when I go the hairdresser’. I’ve tried to tell them ‘No, TWP is not a real place. He’s not referring to something as specific as a visit to the hairdresser.’ Kind of ironic that one of the most popular children’s authors of all time is using metaphors that go right over his audiences’ heads, isn’t it? Not really. There are lots of other examples of authors and writers that do this. Roald Dahl. The Simpsons. It’s like these writers are doing the adults a favour for reading their books to their children. The adults have got to have fun too!
Everyone’s been ‘in’ TWP at some point in their lives. I feel like I’ve been in it more than I’ve been out of it, for various reasons which I won’t go into here. However, one example I’ll talk about today is when we were living in our one-bedroom apartment in a noisy (but trendy) neighbourhood from 2010-2015. Towards the end, we were feeling increasingly restricted in the space. We were waiting for something, but for what exactly? Fortunately, during that time our ‘war chest’ (AKA money in the bank) steadily grew and one day it dawned upon us that we’ve got all this money in the bank doing nothing! As an aside, it still dumbfounds me that this is considered by the majority of society as the thing to do with your money. It wasn’t until around 2015 that I realised that you’re really going backwards if all you’re doing with your money is keeping it in the bank! So we set about looking for a place to buy. Our hearts were originally set on Kiama in NSW, a coastal town about two hours south of Sydney. For two to three months our main focus was the real estate market in Kiama. Every other Saturday we’d drive down and look at houses for sale. We made an offer on a house but that fell through. We eventually gave up because we couldn’t find the place that matched our expectations within our budget. So then what were we to do? Wait? For what? A few months later, my wife started entertaining the idea of buying something in the neighbourhood where we live today. It was almost the complete opposite of Kiama, but she had her reasons. We loved the area. We’d often visit for coffee/brunch/lunch and one day I randomly said ‘This would be a cool place to live as an old person. Wouldn’t it be fun to retire here?’. We both agreed that it would be fun, and left it at that. So after the Kiama dream faded (‘Have we given up on Kiama for sure?’ I asked a few times ...), she suggested that we could buy something where we want to retire ... live there for a few years ... then after that, put it on the rental market and move to the country ... and then move back into the apartment when we were old. OK, it was a bit left-field but I liked the idea. So that’s what we did, and that’s where we are now. Waiting. Still waiting. Sigh.
Are you ‘just’ waiting? What are you waiting for? Are we ever out of TWP? When we say ‘I can’t do xyz because I’m waiting for abc to happen’, are we just being lazy or scared to face a challenge?
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