Anticipation is powerful. We wait for things. For our whole lives, we go from doing something to waiting on something else. It’s neither good nor bad, but neutral. How we react to the wait is up to us. 

Recently, I sat in a lobby waiting for someone. I was nervous for no good reason. I felt a slight anxiety even though it was something I’d done many times before. Realizing I was nervous helped. 

Before flying, I’m always nervous. Nothing bad has ever happened—unless you count motion sickness, which is a curse in itself—but still, I anticipate something; likely the unknown. In those moments, it helps to recognize my nervousness and allow it to some extent. 

Then there’s the waiting for good things. A fun vacation is a good thing to wait for, despite it usually requiring getting on an airplane. We wait to meet with friends, we wait to watch an anticipated movie, we wait to hear back if we got accepted for that job, we wait to see if that other person will say yes. All these things require anticipation, and in the moments where we’re waiting, it’s easy to be eaten up by the unknown. 

Whether it’s something I want or don’t want, I’m always at a point of waiting, of anticipation, of uncertainty. That’s life. 

One way I’ve handled it is spending less time preparing. I used to spend days and hours preparing for tests in school, when less time would have sufficed. I used to over-prepare for airplane travel when the night before is fine. I’ve spent so much time preparing for so many things that my life has felt like short periods of things I enjoy surrounded by the stress leading up to it. 

This is why I like running. There is no before, no after, just the thing. Me, a wooded trail, my shoes, and the sound of my breath. That’s it. I don’t know what will come before, I don’t know what will come after. Of course, this isn’t entirely true. I still wonder what’s around the next corner, what I’ll eat for dinner, how to navigate that walker with a dog off leash in front of me. But still, it’s about the purest form of living I know. For those moments, I’m alive, doing a thing, and in it. 

I want more of that, more of being in a thing and present with it. More of just playing with my kids, more of sitting and hanging out with my wife, more of talking with a friend without technology to distract. I’m slowly getting better at that, but still being kind to myself to sometimes stress out and sometimes relax. 

Recently, I went on a long car ride with two other people over a weekend. We were in the car for fourteen hours round trip. Sometimes that can be stressful, spending hours alone with someone for awkward silence or disjoined conversation. 

All three of us have known each other for over a decade, and our lives and intersected on many occasions in church and in life. We know each other by name, know each other’s families, and have been involved in just living life on parallel tracks. We’ve talked for short bursts here and there, but never for long periods of time. 

It could have been a stressful ride, and I was a little unsure going into it if we’d hit it off with our conversation. It could have gone bad, but that’s not what happened. We talked the entire time. It was amazing. It felt like a microcosm of life. We talked about so many topics, from our local community to politics to growing up to how we like to work. We had time to move through things and digest them. And because of the nature of driving, we were absent our smartphones; we were present in the moment. 

At the end, one of my driving companions mentioned that they too were surprised at the great conversations we’d had, and that it wasn’t something they expected. 

I want life to be more like that, present in the moment with friends, spending time being and living and building connections. 

Of course, there are still things that are stressful; we need to provide for our families, be part of a community with all the good and bad that comes from it, and do many things that aren’t necessarily our favorite. But through all that, we can embrace and look for the moments where we can be present, and there are more of those than I would have suspected. Even in a tiny moment waiting in a lobby, we can pause and just exist.