For you, Jean

 

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot, 'East Coker'

* * *

So what's wrong with waiting? What's wrong with biding your time and outlasting those moments when 'the day is as dark as the night is long'?

In his review of Clint Eastwood's movie Invictus, Roger Ebert describes his own visit to Nelson Mandela's cell: "You regard that cell and you think, here a great man waited in faith for his rendezvous with history."

So what's wrong with waiting?

Moses spent the first 40 years of his life living in princely opulence in Egypt; the next 40 wandering the desert, raising sheep and a family; and the last 40 leading the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land of Canaan, defeating Pharaoh's armies and a host of other nations along the way.

* * *

Right: "Whatever you need to do, do it now. By 4.30 you must be ready."

Left: "I always believe there's a bright side to things."

"You make me believe what tomorrow could bring when today doesn’t really know."

Air Supply, 'All Out of Love'