Passive waiting indicates defeat; active waiting signals hope, expectancy. The runner waiting for the gun to go off waits with positive tension anticipating a winning effort. The cyclist who commits to hours of endurance training does so with the expectation that race pace will be longer and climbs stronger

In the Christian calendar, Sunday, November 30^th was the first Sunday of Advent. A prominent theme of the Advent season, the weeks and days leading up to December 25^th, is WAITING.

In fact, to oh so many of us, the entire month of December seems to be a time of waiting. Waiting to give and receive gifts on Christmas morning, each day of Hanukkah, or for whatever gift-giving celebration one observes, is only a part of the waiting.

There’s the waiting for cookies to finish baking, waiting for snow to fall and when it does, the waiting for cross country ski and VAST snowmobile trails to accumulate enough to use without the aid of snow guns. There’s waiting in line, waiting for the car to warm up, waiting for the coffee to brew and waiting to get in gear the morning after a late night.

There’s waiting for Winter Solstice to finally turn the tide on daylight hours and, for some, waiting to get back outdoors for spring and summer sports.

Sometimes waiting seems like a monumental waste of time: waiting for someone who is late, waiting for your child to finally get dressed so you can take him to school, waiting for your daughter to finish her hockey practice and waiting for your elderly parent to painstakingly choose the perfect greeting card on a shopping trip.

However, I have recently been reading advice to make good use of time spent waiting. Athletes are known to resist the inclusion of recovery in their ambitious training programs. Perhaps waiting is a built-in recovery period. Yoga instructors ask participants to “be in the moment.” Waiting does that too, doesn’t it? “Slow down before you get hurt.” Have you heard that one? Rushing about frantically is a health hazard. When stuck on hold, breathe, reorganize and proceed mindfully.

When forced to spend minutes or longer in waiting mode, if we can practice settling, breathing, thinking and letting life flow through us, perhaps we can make waiting something positive instead of negative, something beneficial instead of harmful, a gift and not a punishment.

Like everything else we do, waiting is a skill to be practiced and the more we practice, the more we will learn about ourselves, the more we will seek and find, the more we will notice and actually see, and the more proficient we will become at doing so.

The holiday season is a time of mixed emotions. It is a time of intensities and extremes from very good to very bad, from the deepest happiness to the most painful sadness. Traditions magnify joy and intensify grief. From a baby’s first holiday or the happy couple’s anticipation of their June wedding to the terminally ill patient or failing senior waiting for the end to come, the range of emotions, memories and expectations of a holiday season are infinite and indefinable.

But no matter how we cut it, the month of December is here and it will return again in another calendar year. On the 31^st we will ring in the New Year and start all over again.You may even say “I just can’t wait until …!”

Perhaps a gift we can give ourselves this year is to learn to wait – not patiently with the lid firmly locked down on our enthusiasm, but in time spent alone with ourselves, our innermost thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears and expectations. In so doing, may we find peace. May we feel the strong bonds of community with family, neighbors, like-minded others and, in the long run, with humanity itself. May we learn the true value of waiting. After all, in waiting, we must have faith that there is something to wait for, something better ahead, something worth living another day, putting one foot in front of another, striving for. There are people with whom to connect. There are goals to be achieved. There is performance to be maximized. There is health and well-being to realize. If the waiting is active, not passive, it will support and sustain growth. Perhaps the real question is, “What are we waiting for?” And, “how are we waiting?”

HAPPY HOLIDAYS. MERRY CHRISTMAS. HAPPY NEW YEAR. TO ALL.