B

  How many times in our lives do we wait? We wait for little things, such as our food at restaurants, tickets to see the newest movie and spring to come with new life. We wait for big things, such as our acceptance letters in the mail, our families to come home from war, our retirement to set us free from the binds of our career.

  And so often when we wait, we feel as though we are wasting time. In this day and age, we are known as the here-and-now generation and our children are good at computers before they are fluent in English. There is no time to wait on our touch screens. There is no app for waiting.

  We have forgotten the beauty of waiting. We have also forgotten the pleasure of hot chocolates being passed around and hands rubbing against one another, as we try to keep each other warm. We have forgotten the gossip we tell and stories we share as we wait for our waiter to come with our food. We have forgotten that the best part of Christmas is not Christmas Day, but the waiting for Christmas, the songs of snowmen and sleigh bells, the smell of eggnog around the fire and the stringing of lights around the house.

  Nowadays we are so busy with “living life”, that we have forgotten that most of life is supposed to be spent on thinking, and then enjoying. We have turned the volume up and sped up the song, trying to drown out the wait around us.

  I have learned that waiting is life’s best teacher. It teaches you the importance of stopping to look at the sky or listen to the sound of the wind. It pushes you to stay hopeful and forces you to be strong even though you don’t think you have any strength to give. It reminds you that sometimes you can’t have what you want here and now because it’s better that way.

  My mother says I am spoiled because I have grown up in the age of technology. But sometimes I think, the word she is looking for is “deprived(贫穷的)”. We are deprived because we have too much. Too much that blinds us from what is essential. “I’ll wait for you” were some of the last words I said to my husband as he left for the army. They were similar to the words my grandfather said at his wife’s funeral. They were the same words my cousin whispered to me when I was afraid to use my grandfather’s outhouse in the dark. They were the words my brother used when he walked with me to the bus in the morning to school.