Waiting for a better job or a new love often feels like time wasted, and sometimes like failure. But Mariska Jansen believes even while waiting, things are happening.
“When you are forced to stay at home because of unemployment or illness, you can gain insights into yourself you never had before,” says Dutch career coach Van Schoonhoven. “You need to be open to them and give your dreams space.” So while you might feel like you’re not doing anything in standby mode, the opposite is often true. Because you are waiting, you create distance from whatever it was you were doing before, and you can experience inner growth.
According to French philosopher Simone Weil, a period of waiting is crucial to obtaining real attention – one of the best things in life. Attention, she writes, is “turning off your seeking thoughts and making yourself available, empty and open to things.” By surrendering to waiting you give your deepest self, the soul, the pause it needs to travel where it wants to go. And suddenly answers may appear that touch on the core of life. Weil believed that, “The most precious values mustn’t be sought, but waited for.”
- You can read the article in issue 17.
Text Mariska Jansen Photography Stocksy
