01/28/2026
"The Moment We Stop Waiting"
Have you ever noticed how much of life we spend waiting before we actually live? We wait for holidays, circling dates as if they hold permission. We wait for events, for signs, for something to arrive and finally tell us, this is it. We wait for true love, as if it’s running late somewhere, and we wait for our children to grow, only to quietly ache for the moments we rushed past. We wait for the snow to stop falling, for winter to loosen its grip, for cold days to hurry along so summer can take over. Then summer comes, heat heavy and relentless, and we wait again, for the air to soften, for the first cool breath of fall, for back-to-school mornings that remind us how to exhale.
We wait for the leaves to turn, for nights to stretch longer, for the slow march toward the holidays, eager for guests to arrive and, just as quietly, already looking forward to the calm after they leave. We wait for mornings that don’t begin at six, for weekends, for relief, sometimes even for the other shoe to drop. Waiting becomes a habit, a rhythm, a language we speak without realizing we’ve been fluent for years, a way of convincing ourselves that life hasn’t started yet.
But maybe life was never asking us to wait. Maybe it was only showing us how often we do. What if the waiting ended the moment we decided it does? What if we stopped postponing joy, stopped tucking happiness into tomorrow, stopped believing meaning lived somewhere ahead of us? The days are still ordinary. The future still uncertain. And still, we are allowed to live. We can choose presence over anticipation, now over next, this breath over the promise of another. Hope is not in what’s coming. Hope is the courage to arrive where we already are. And maybe peace has been here all along, quietly waiting for us to stop. Nothing is missing, except our presence.