Waiting
“Just waiting to see what we’ve been left here for”
Did I read that line somewhere? Hear someone say it? I’m not sure. It turns out to be a line from a film and a novella called Train Dreams, which I did not see or read, so I still have no idea how it came to me. Isn’t that grand?
My immediate response was that we are not waiting. We are already doing what we’ve been left here for! It seemed to imply that the future holds the answer when we are actually here, now, in the present.
Only later did I discover the context of the line. Two people, who have suffered profound losses, are trying to find their footing in the new landscape of their lives, after the meaningful anchors in their lives have disappeared. And now, they continue forward to see what awaits. What will they find as purpose? What will create or provide meaning after such deep grief? Where will they find connection?
It is all unclear to them in this moment. Yet, the moment is all they have— unclarity, confusion, indecision, pain. This is the moment out of which the proverbial meaning and purpose will emerge. The losses will not disappear. The pain of those losses will, most likely, lessen over time. All of this is part of the discovery, part of the emergence from each moment.
I have no idea how these two fictional characters resolved this quest. Maybe they didn’t. This, however is certain—the flow from one moment to the next will take each of them away, from the moment the woman uttered that line, to somewhere else. Then they will each know what they’ve been left here for…left without their former anchors to find themselves, as themselves.
Each of us also flow from moment to moment, possibly in the same confusion and bewilderment. Can we let ourselves be-wilder-ment? Can we allow our creative energy to guide us into (or deeper into) meaningful engagement and purposeful activity? That might mean writing a novel, building a shed, meditating, planting a tree, or nursing an ailing friend. That’s what we are left here to do.
Elders like us have survived losses and grief and feeling unanchored. We may be in that place right now, or have experienced it years ago. Somehow, in the inexorable moment-to-moment being of life, we continue. We find what we are here to do—and to be.