I will wait for you.

Waiting. It is a lonely experience to wait for another: at times, there is nothing more harrowing that wondering if the other will appear.

The waiting I speak of is more than waiting at a station for the return of a friend or family member, yet it does not exclude this waiting. Indeed, this waiting will be the metaphor for the other periods of waiting that we must endure.

I organise to meet with someone at a station and they give an approximate time, when I expect they will arrive, they even give me a sign for me to look out for so that I will know that they are arriving shortly. The time passes and the sign that they have given seems to have come. And, yet, they do not appear. So I wait.

Each agonising minute passes and the one I long to see fails to arrive. I call them, and there is no answer; I seek them, and do not find. Are they lost? Perhaps they do not want to see me? There is no way for me to contact them and find out. I do not even know anyone who they may be with.

See? I seek and call, yet I do not perceive an answer.

Finally, I give up; I abandon myself to the situation I cannot control and could never have controlled, and I  simply sit. It is then that the one I am waiting for arrives. Not immediately, and yet the time between my abandon and their arrival passes quickly. The minute is no longer an agony, each moment no longer causes me torment because there is nothing that I can do, and I realise this, now.




Waiting. It is a lonely experience to know that no one will be waiting for you: at times, there is nothing more harrowing than knowing that know no one and nothing wait upon your return.

The waiting I speak of is more than a friend or family member waiting at a station for my return, yet it does not exclude this waiting. Indeed, this waiting will be the metaphor for the other periods of waiting that we must endure.

I organise a trip to the city. It is busy and impersonal, even the ones who speak on the street fail to see me as a person, I am just a customer, just a potential convert, just a thing that is moving and, perhaps, in the way. It rains; there is no room under cover for me to shelter.. I walk down a dead-end alley; I get lost; there is no a face I can look into to see a word of comfort or seek a word of direction. The stranger I ask for directions ignores me. I am alone.

See? I seek and call, yet I do not perceive an answer.

Finally, I give up but I am unwilling to head home. There will be nobody and nothing waiting for me, only work, only what I must do to make up for this lonely, exhausting, wasted day. I am caught; trapped between life and death, it seems. The life that I’m in now, this impersonal nightmare, and the death of nobody caring where I am.

Satre was wrong. Other people are not hell, they are Life - as distinct from life - Life is other people.