You Don't Have to Wait for Freedom

So we're entering late summer here.

The first few dry and brittle leaves are starting to fall.

Mm.

Around my neighborhood, the only thing blooming now is the crape myrtles, and they're kind of soggy and wet and hanging down.

And I saw one of my neighbors this morning, we were both walking our dogs, and he said, "I love this time of year." He really...

He looked like he meant it, too.

He was moving slowly.

He was talking slowly.

He was smiling.

But I find that August actually, late July, August, it lands differently for me.

The heavy air feels like a, like a hot, wet sweater, and the quiet at this time of year, unlike, say, in January, feels kinda lonely 'cause I think people are having fun somewhere else.

And I often have this sense in July and August like I'm, I'm waiting for something.

So I wanted to talk tonight about that feeling of waiting, what it is, how it makes us feel, and maybe how we wanna work with it.

So my family and I went to Massachusetts last week, uh, to see some relatives and hangout on the beach, and my kids have been talking about this trip since March or April.

Um, they've been waiting for months.

My daughter couldn't wait to see her cousins.

My son couldn't wait to see his uncle and ride on a boat.

They couldn't wait for the car ride where they're allowed to watch 10 straight hours of television.

Then, of course, there was traffic, and they couldn't wait to get there.

They couldn't wait for their turn with the iPad that had the good shows on it.

Every morning when we were there, my three-year-old would burst out of her room in her swimsuit, saying, "I'm ready for the beach," and she couldn't wait to go.

They couldn't wait to get their sunblock on.

They couldn't wait for us to drive to the beach or to stop talking to the other grown-ups before we actually walked to the beach.

And then for a little while they stopped waiting, sort of.

But if I watched them closely, they were waiting for the other kids to pay attention to them, they were waiting for us to give them a snack, they were waiting for their turn with a shovel, they were waiting for the game that they actually wanted to play, then they were waiting for the night that we'd take them out for ice cream.

I think there were some moments of contented absorption, but they were checkered throughout the day, and there was a lot of actually intense unhappy waiting in between.