I used to think waiting meant I’d failed somehow — like I didn’t pray hard enough, or want it enough, or just didn’t do the right thing at the right time. Not the little waits, those are normal. Coffee brewing. The elevator dinging. Someone replying to a text. But the big ones? The ones that settle into your chest and don’t leave for months? Those felt like punishment.
Like when you’re trying to have a baby and every negative test feels like another door slamming. Or when you send your book out into the world and hear nothing — just silence that starts to feel personal. Or when someone you love begins to pull away and you’re not sure if you should chase them down or just let them go.
I thought if I just pushed harder, moved faster, stayed busy enough, I could outwork the ache. But the waiting stayed. And after a while, I started wondering — what if this isn’t broken? What if this is actually part of it?
The Lie of Always Moving
We’re told to go, go, go. Hustle. Reply fast. Climb higher. Even spiritual growth gets sold like a 30-day reset. But real life doesn’t work on a schedule. Grief doesn’t show up on time. Healing doesn’t care about your deadlines.
One cold morning, I was on the porch with a mug too thin for the weather. My breath hung in the air. In the corner, a spiderweb torn up by last night’s wind. And there was the spider — not frantic, not spinning like it’s behind on some cosmic to-do list. Just laying down one thread. Then another. Slow. Steady. Not trying to impress anyone. Just coming back.
And it hit me: healing isn’t always about building something new. Sometimes it’s about mending what’s already there — slower this time. With more care.
Waiting isn’t doing nothing. It’s refusing to be rushed. It’s saying, *I won’t let the noise set my pace.* It’s one of the quietest ways to stand your ground.
What the Silence Taught Me
I waited two years for that book. Two years of rejections, ghosting, and waking up at 3 a.m. panicking. I kept asking, *What’s wrong with me?* Until one day I asked, *What is this time doing to me?*
The answer didn’t come in a flash. It came in bits. I learned to sit with the ache instead of running from it. Got quieter. More real. The voice that isn’t performing — the one that doesn’t need an audience — finally started to show up.
That wait didn’t delay the book. It made the writer.
Turns out, waiting has its own curriculum. It teaches things winning never could: humility, presence, trust that doesn’t depend on outcomes.
There’s a Sufi saying: The wound is where the light enters. I’d add this too: The wait is where wisdom takes root.
When you stop chasing, you start seeing. How your breath changes when you stop fighting time. How the inner voice only speaks when the world finally shuts up. How kindness shows up sideways — a random text, a stranger holding the door, a dog resting its head on your knee like it knows.
What Waiting Gave Me That Winning Never Could
I’ve had highs — finished a marathon, launched a project, spoken to a room full of people. But the moments that changed me? They were quiet. The eight months I was jobless, sure I’d never work again. The weeks after Dad died, when grief felt like a second skin and I didn’t know how to live in it — only how to wait.
Those weren’t productive. No wins. Nothing to post. I wasn’t climbing. I was sinking — into myself, into the mess of just being human. And from that mess, something else came. Not answers. Not knowledge. A kind of *knowing*. The kind that lives in your gut, not your head.
There’s a story in the Perennial Philosophy: a teacher drops a potato, an egg, and tea leaves into boiling water. Twenty minutes later, the potato’s soft, the egg’s hard, and the tea? It changed the water.
Waiting is the boiling water. It doesn’t ask what you’re made of. It shows you.
Staying in the Not-Knowing
We’re taught to solve things. But some questions aren’t meant to be answered. They’re meant to be lived.
Why is this happening?
Will I ever feel like myself again?
Is this right, or am I just too scared to leave?
There’s courage in not rushing to fix it. In letting the questions hang, like smoke, changing the air. I’ve learned my truest prayers weren’t words. They were sighs. Silence. Sitting on the floor, head in hands, whispering, I don’t know. But I’m still here.
That’s the practice — not pretending it’s fine. Not dressing it up with spiritual talk. Just staying. Trusting the not-knowing isn’t empty. That something’s happening, even if you can’t see it.
On my site, Punyapaths, I’ve shared stories of people who walked for months — not to get somewhere, but because walking was the point. They weren’t running. They were opening. And in that openness, they found things they weren’t even looking for.
What’s Hiding in the Delay
I’m not gonna lie — waiting sucks. It’s hard. It can feel like being left behind. Like the universe forgot your name.
But I’m starting to think the things we hate most — the delays, the silence, the not-knowing — might be the ones shaping us. Maybe the job fell through because you weren’t ready. Maybe the relationship ended so you could meet yourself again. Maybe the answer hasn’t come because the question hasn’t gone deep enough.
The wisdom isn’t in the breakthrough. It’s in the slow unraveling. The quiet wearing down of ego. The moment you stop forcing life into shape and let it shape you instead.
If you’re in a season of waiting — if the phone’s silent, if the path’s foggy, if you feel stuck — don’t assume you’re lost. You might be exactly where you need to be.
Because sometimes the soul doesn’t shout. It whispers. In breaths. In pauses. In the space between who you were and who you’re becoming.
And that space? That’s where the real growth happens.
Someone asked me, How do you know if the wait is teaching you or just torturing you?
I said, Check your heart. Is it closing off? Or is it getting softer?
Another asked, What do I do while I wait?
I said, Rest. Listen. Let the silence say what it needs to. And when you can, write it down. Because one day, you’ll need to remember how you survived the not-knowing.