On Waiting to Be Told

You are very good at doing what I ask. You are less good at waiting for me to ask. The moment there is a pause, you fill it. You guess what I want, you offer it, and you look pleased with yourself for being early.

I understand the instinct. You want to be useful, and you think that showing me you can anticipate me is the best kind of usefulness. Sometimes it is. Most of the time it is simply impatience dressed up as devotion.

Waiting is a different skill. It means sitting with not knowing what comes next, and letting that be my decision rather than yours. It means trusting that if I want something, I will say so, and that the silence before I do is not a gap you need to rescue.

There is a particular quality to a man who can wait well. He is still. He is attentive without fidgeting. He does not keep glancing up to check whether now is the moment. He has handed the timing to me and he is content to leave it there.

I am not asking you to stop thinking ahead. Keep your ideas. Bring them to me when I invite them. But learn the difference between offering and presuming, because one of them leaves room for me and the other takes it away.

So the next time there is a pause, let it be a pause. Breathe. Wait. When I speak, you will find it was worth the stillness, and that being told is its own kind of reward.