If I could bottle any feeling, it would be anticipation: that feeling of waiting for something good. It‘s lightning in a bottle, expectancy of a contentment or delight, the prospect of imminent aliveness. As creatures who seek pleasure (and tend to avoid pain), it’s arguably the sensation to which we are most drawn. There’s a looking forward to the moment, a hopefulness tied less to optimism, than a surety, a deeper understanding that a good thing is bound to happen. Anticipation requires that you know ahead of time the experience will be a good one; that’s what distinguishes it from apprehension or anxiety. Fear, concern, worry – fall to the background; they are put out of body and mind. There is no room for trepidation where anticipation is concerned; such unease has no bearing on what’s surely to come.
The certainty with which we can assume a fortunate outcome comes from experience, but also from a broad familiarity with the way of the world, an abstruse comprehension: this is the way things are. The thing itself – the moment of goodness – is the outcome we relish. But it also marks the start of the let-down. Once it comes, that culminating moment, it’s the beginning of the end. Certainly, it’s the memorable moment – the one we hold, keep, store - but our eagerness betrays us: It’s the eagerness itself that has us holding on.
We are sitting in a moment of suspense, with the vaccination roll out having picked up steam (if you can even use that expression to metaphorically describe a train that started off derailed, and whose inertia was then subject to an exhaustive mess of tracks, switches and signals). Our anticipation of “normalcy” rides alongside us, blown too with wind that is created only on account of our own movement.
How do we proceed in this moment? How do we move through the mundanity of a day and still hold tight this feeling of change a-comin’? How long can we sit in anticipation when patience sits at the other (short) end?
If we allow it, each moment can carry an anticipation of the next. Maybe we don’t wait… maybe we treat each moment as whole – and as it should be? It seems we have the power to make moments feel less dormant and more embryonic. It’s a big question, as it affects us critically when we wait. Why else would patience be one of our most trying virtues?