Editorial August 29, 1988 Issue

About not waiting to live

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.

It may start out with as small a matter as always waiting for the end of the workweek. Or for vacation. It may be feeling you have to get past a visit with some relatives you think you'd rather not meet.

It's a little like holding your breath mentally, not feeling this is the time—or perhaps that there just isn't time—to live very fully. You put your expectations on hold, purposely don't feel as deeply as you could, don't have much affection to give the people around you.

In more ways than we're conscious of, we may postpone living until another time. Some might call it a defense mechanism, a way of getting through. People dread that life is less than they feel it should be—that it is menial, boring, insincere, hopeless, painful, or anti-life in some way. And certainly human life at times seems to be all that and more. Yet if we simply concur, and fall into agreeing, we end up trying to skip over whole stretches of life. We are simply waiting to live.

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