Observations on value of waiting

Observations on value of waiting  

By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

(Harold Schweizer, the 2010-11 John P. Crozer Professor of English in Bucknell University talks about the value of waiting; he has the intellectual cachet and his concept of waiting has wide currency; however, I have my own  observations to make)

Bucknell University

Reposted June 23, 2011

LEWISBURG, Pa. — Harold Schweizer, the 2010-11 John P. Crozer Professor of English, talks about the value of waiting in an impatient world. 

Q: In a recent talk, you said that what has value must be waited for. Yet with all our technology aimed at instant gratification, how can we learn to value the concept of waiting for anything?

‘The notion of value depends on our own investment in an object. If an object is to be valuable, we have to invest ourselves in it. There is no better investment than to give one's time, to wait for something. Most often, if one gets a desired object immediately, one's own being is not involved in that object, and the object remains impersonal, exchangeable, dispensable. It has nothing of ourselves in it.

To wait for an object endows it with value. To contemplate an object without possessing it is valuable, because the sense of whether one should possess that object or not is acquired in that duration of waiting. Not to wait, to be instantly gratified, can produce a gratification that will be short-lived and will have to be replaced by another gratification as soon as possible. Waiting — patient waiting — is opposed to greed and consumption. 

This whole thinking goes back to the somewhat unfashionable concept of courtship, a period of waiting in which we come to know the value of a person through waiting. It is through our existential presence, our giving of time to another person that we come to recognize that person's value.’

·       We wait for things because we value them. We wait for a bus because we value it as the means to carry us to a place we wish to be. Things do not derive their worth because of the wait; in other words they do not become valuable because of our wait; they are valuable in themselves as truth is valuable because it is truth even no one believes it or every one rejects it. People wait for the special days or occasions because these days afford them the great scope for fun and enjoyment; however most of the people do not wait for the enlightening sermon in a church because it is for them the unwelcome attempt to distract them from worldly joys. Words in church teach human to be a human and help him to nourish his spirituality; they have intrinsic worth, they are inherently valuable, they are valuable independent of someone’s wait, valuable without our investment in it.

·       It is true that object becomes impersonal and dispensable without our own being involved in it; but thing valued can wrongly be valued if it has no inherent value; for example, young may desire for an orgy and debauched for an opportunity for unbridled gratification of libido: wait cannot endow these desires with value. Contemplation, no doubt, without possessing the object is valuable, because the sense of whether one should possess that object  or not  is acquired in duration of waiting, however picture from distance is often so bewitching that only desire that can prevail is the desire to have it; but the real picture often is buried deep beneath the veneer of respectability and the gloss of good manners; we do not come to know the value of person through waiting; we recognize the person value when the period of waiting comes to an end and then we either feel that  wait was pleasantly justified (pleasant feelings are only possible when thing is inherently good) or feel intense disappointment (as wait cannot make ugly beautiful; things were ugly and pleasantness was just the cover up and intimacy enables one to penetrate it).

·       Our replacement of one gratification by another is because of being so removed from the natural way of life. Short lived gratification is because of our preference for artificiality; we prefer beverages on water and beverages slake our thirst in order to whet it so that production can be round the clock. Our preference of form over substance makes our search for happiness endlessly futile, we can be instantly gratified by water but water does not attract us in a way beverages do. Our exclusive focus on sensual gratification (and that as well through artificial means that make gratification short-lived) impoverishes our spirituality. The appeasement of animal instincts can only satisfy us in part; the soul aches and makes us profoundly melancholic.

·       Waiting itself is of no benefit if it is not purposeful. Waiting is to be waited it has to be planned; one has to look forward to the time that affords waiting so that waiting can be the opportunity for introspection and self appraisal and helps one to see things in the right perspective. One may realize then that he has pursued pleasure so far in such haste that he has hurried past it; he may realize the stupidity of earning money for money’s sake; he may become aware of the purpose of his existence. Thoughtless waiting is time spent ‘with mix of compulsion and boredom’ or observing ‘trivial objects’ not in evaluating the pluses and minuses of life spent so far.  

Q: Have you spoken about this with your students? Is there a difference between those who are older and college students who have grown up with this sense of immediacy?

A: ‘I sometimes compare our presence before a work of art to our presence before a patient. I've done some work in the medical humanities and it's taught me that the way we wait with a patient is actually something that we could learn from waiting with a work of art. || More: 'The Patient' explores waiting, suffering and humanity

I like to think that works of art elicit from us a kind of mute presence. We are initially simply in their presence, just as we cannot do better when we sit at somebody's bedside than to share ourselves with him or her, to wait patiently with the patient. Perhaps physicians could learn this patience from works of art: to be first and foremost present to a patient, to wait so that the patient can reveal himself in his own time.’

·       We wait with a patient so that a patient reveals himself through his resistance. This is his inner determination strengthened by medicine that determines his recovery. Work of art reveals itself through the act of waiting but it means that its inner qualities those are intrinsic but subtle are obvious only through patient inspection. Patient obtains strength through outer source (medicine) but work of art obtains no strength as patient does, this is the fallacy of analogy.

‘The baby has been waited for and will be welcomed as something that has the value that is invested in her through the time that the parents embody in their waiting.’

·       If things always have value invested through the time, we may not have the word anti-climax. Days spent in preparation for Christmas are much more enjoyable than the Christmas itself. In waiting one constructs mental picture and is deeply disappointed of the thing that when reveals itself does not correspond to his expectation.