The fear of boredom and the art of waiting

People can wait more easily for something when they are occupied. It's doing nothing while waiting that they find hard.

- Chua Mui Hoong

I've always hated waiting. When I enter a carpark and there are no empty spaces, I drive out, rather than hover in the car. I fidget at traffic light stops. When early for an appointment, I walk around, or get on my phone. In the days before mobile phones, I used to delve into a book.

So it was hard for me when my newly-wedded husband D left our home, a fortnight after we got married, and embarked on a solo pilgrimage trek in Europe. The trip had been planned months before, and we had brought forward the wedding as we wanted things to be settled between us before he left.

To be honest, there is nothing scary about waiting for a loved one while they walk the camino in Portugal, an established route. Many people endure waiting in more harrowing circumstances. Like the woman from Ukraine who visited us in Perth one morning. She had fled her country when the Russians attacked, and got on a train that ended up in Germany, from where she was granted refuge in Australia.

She is trying to remake her life in Australia, but her heart is in Ukraine. She showed me photos of her husband and son, both serving in the military there. For a refugee like her, every day is a lesson in waiting, suspended between hope and fear. A ping on the phone could mean bad news from the war; or a caring text. And through it all, the uncertainty of what the future holds — will she be reunited with family? How long will this separation be?

Waiting is part of the human experience. Some waits are short and sharp and can change your life — like the result of a pregnancy or DNA test. Other periods of waiting, brought on, perhaps, by war, imprisonment or illness, may stretch longer. Some waits are burdened with sorrow — such as when you're on a plane, flying halfway across the world to attend the funeral of someone you care about. Others are joyful — for example when you are waiting for a baby to be born or counting down the days to a milestone event.