An excerpt from unpublished manuscript on "The Philosophy of Waiting"
By Danny Sillada

"I don't know why I'm waiting
I used to think I knew
But now it's so ingrained in me
It's all I know to do."
-JulieZerbe, Waiting from Songs of Life

Blessed are those who wait because they have something to wait for...

A five-year old Mandayan child would climb on a steep and rocky hill everyday to visit his mother's grave. He would sit there in silence for hours beside the pile of rocks where his mother was buried. Every now and then the passersby from the village would take a detour from a long trail leading to the barrio and, instead, climb to the same steep hill where the child's mother was buried.

For years, the bizarre ritual became an ordinary routine for the passersby to drop by at the burial ground. They would sit beside the grown-up boy for a few moments of silence before they continue their journey toward the plain or low land.

One day, a stranger who visited the place for days, noticed the uncanny behavior of the natives in the village and asked what they were doing there everyday with the boy on a steep and rocky hill. An old woman politely responded, "We are waiting for his mother to come back..."

What does waiting mean in our life and what is life without waiting?

A lover, for instance, is patiently waiting for his beloved at their secret rendezvous, an expectant mother is waiting for the birth of her child, an old man is waiting for his estranged son to come home, a daughter is waiting for her mother to wake up from a coma, or a cancer patient is waiting for his borrowed existence to linger a little longer. All these waiting are characterized with emotional tensions and anxieties, of hopes and dreams, of joys and sorrows, of excitements and disappointments.

Basically, waiting is the anticipation of something or someone to come within the expected time. There are three essential elements of waiting: the one who is waiting (the subject), the occurrence of action, and the arrival of the expected.

The condition of waiting can be analogically described between the two points: the waiter and the waited. The distance between the waiter and the waited is the duration of time where the action is expected to occur. The time between the two points of waiting is crucially indispensable because it is where the expected action occurs.

Time is the most essential element of waiting because it is where the other two elements converge to complete the waiting. However, the essence of waiting is not dependent on the waited because the latter is just a representation of a thing or a person or an abstract thought and desire as object of waiting.

In the same manner, the waiter as the subject of waiting is the real and tangible actor of waiting. The object of waiting, although it is the waited, does not possess the material presence unless it occurs within time between the distances of two points where the action is expected to occur.

The material quality of the object (e.g., a person or a thing) does not possess certainty as the object of waiting because it may or may not occur within the expected time. That is why waiting is the anticipation of something or someone to come within the particular duration of time.

It is possible, however, that the expected time will occur but the object of waiting may not, or it may arrive later out of the expected time and, thus, complete the waiting. On the other hand, the completion of waiting is not totally dependent on the waited or the object of waiting because it is an open-ended condition.

In waiting, time is indefinite and not fixable because it is immutable. No one can hold time at the palm of one's hand or fix it to suit one's needs. Essentially, human existence is dependent on space and time because without these elements, there can be no existence in the same manner, as waiting exists because of space and time where the waiter and the waited occupy and exist.

Waiting in itself is an emotional and mental condition, which is preordained to look forward and anticipate for something or someone to come. In strict sense of the word, the object of anticipation is the future. Whether the waited is a person or a thing, a wish or a dream, a plan or a chance, the waited as the object of waiting is precariously uncertain, remote, and immaterial because it has yet to happen. It belongs to the future of uncertainty even if the waited tangibly exists within space and time.

The completion of waiting can only occur in reality if the three essential elements converge at a particular time at a given situation. So long as the waited does not arrive between the two points of waiting, the latter remains in a state of anticipation, and that anticipation becomes an obsessive desire toward the future – toward the object of desire, which is, the waited.

It is here where the tension takes place, the tension between living and existing. From the conception of a child until birth, from birthing to the development of consciousness, from puberty to adolescence and from adulthood to dying - the tension in-between is characterized by the conditions of waiting. For life is all about waiting and waiting is the essential condition of human existence.

In reality, man lives and measures existence through space and time. From the moment we become conscious of our life, we begin to anticipate and expect things to come or to happen. We anticipate the future, we wish and dream and hope for something, something that will make our life meaningful. It is about something that will give us reasons to live and exist at a particular time of our given existence.

The search and the anticipation of something is all about waiting and that waiting makes our life restless until we have found what we have been waiting for. Our restlessness gives us the reason to think and rationalize the meaning of human existence. However, between the tensions of restlessness is the tension of despair and anxiety, of joy and sorrow, of boredom and activity, of solitude and happiness, of victory and defeat, and so on and so forth.

The tension pulls us away from our expectations, purges our belief into doubts and confusions, and pushes us at the edge of our crucial responses to life's shortcomings and limitations. Consciously or unconsciously, we realize that life, amid our waiting, is harsh and desolate. We realize that it is stranger than our romantic notion of human existence.

At the heights of our disillusionment, we come to realize that life is a lonely journey which no one can traverse in behalf of "me". The harsh realities of human existence consume our desolate soul and bring us face to face with life. Eventually, bitterness and cynicism begin to dwell in our heart and mind until we see nothing but our "self" in front of others.

Pride, decadence, and egoism become our ardent ally, our armor to prevent others from stepping into our own delicate world. We barricaded ourselves from others by putting on different masks until we lose touch to ourselves and do not know "who am I anymore?"

On the contrary, was it not the tension of life that keeps us awake? Was it not the waiting that gives us hope to dream of something even if it is remote and distant? Was it not despair or sadness that gives us wisdom and understanding of humanity's weaknesses and imperfections?

The harshness of life is not a problem to be avoided, instead, like a broken child, it has to be embraced and accepted because that is the only way to come to terms with our broken existence.

Despair and abandonment are not a curse of humanity; they are, instead, the course to understanding the complexity of human existence. We cannot separate joy from sorrow or defeat from victory because each element is as important to the integral meaning in our struggle to live and find meaning in this lonely world. This is what it means to exist: to live is to suffer from the imperfections and the weaknesses of humanity. We can, however, transform these imperfections by finding meaning even in the most despicable condition of our life.

The condition of life is defined before us and we can do nothing about it. It is a given reality that, most often, we find it hard to reconcile in our search to justify the reason of our existence. Life is all about joy and sorrow, birth and death, frustration and happiness, defeat and victory.

No one can choose to live in happiness alone and neither one could live in despair either because life is the composition of both. Life is a given reality that leaves us no choices but to succumb to its own imperfection. The imperfection is what makes life life, no more, no less. How do we respond to life is our own subjective response and interpretation of human existence.

The condition of waiting can be analogically described between the two points: the waiter and the waited. The distance between the waiter and the waited is the duration of time where the action is expected to occur. The time between the two points of waiting is crucially indispensable because it is where the expected action occurs.

Could it be that the completion of waiting is about the passing of life from this ephemeral existence?

Conversely, Death is the summation of all the essence of our waiting - the completion of human existence.

*Also published at The Sillada Problem.

Poet-painter-philosopher-critic-performance artist from Mindanao; obtained BA Philo., STB and Pastoral Theology at UST, Manila; left the seminary before ordination to priesthood; pursued MBA at Ateneo Graduate School of Business, Makati; resigned from promising career in the corporate world to become full-time artist and literary writer.