One–Two–Three

In this final section the author returns to pairing, the “two” of this chapter title. He hopes to show how you can understand waiting even more clearly by comparing it with emotional experiences that entail not pairs, but the single individual (the “one” of the chapter title) or a trio of individuals (the “three” of the chapter title). One emotion that are associated with “one” is boredom (though depression could be as well). The preeminent emotion associated with “three” is jealousy. The author begins with boredom, an emotion that he was convinced, before he toyed with this book, was the very same thing as waiting. It’s not. This final chapter also aims to link Holding On to the author’s two previous books, Boredom: A Lively History (2011) and Jealousy (2014). Holding On, you might say, is the final part of its own trio.

“The Littler Waiting Room”

In Pierre Bonnard’s Self-Portrait in The Bathroom Mirror it feels as if we are in those very last successful days of Clive James or Jean-Dominique Bauby. This trio, James, Bauby, and Bonnard, are waiting to die. They’re still in the game. They confront in a remarkable way the problem of how to make the best of waiting despite failing vigor, illness, dread, and approaching death. They turn lingering, without much hope in the littler waiting room of life, to their own advantage. They turn dread and cautious waiting to their own advantage. I don’t believe that they solve the problem of this waiting for the end. You cannot. But they show how the experience can sometimes be transmuted from irremediable loss into inspiring gain. Bonnard could have uttered Clive James’ words: “I am restored by my decline and by the harsh awakening that it brings.” Pierre Bonnard’s words were “just because you sing doesn’t mean you’re happy.”

Dithering

Unlike the pausing that takes place in music, the hesitant pause, such as in dithering or procrastination, can be, if not debilitating, at least a problem. But there can be some advantages to dithering. One is that it slows down time, allowing us more time to contemplate what is about to or liable to happen, and to make a decision at the appropriate time. That’s probably the very latest minute. This is Frank Partnoy’s conclusion as it relates to decision-making and as it relates to being effective in business. This version of dithering, a process rather than an emotional experience, is almost a competitive strategy—that’s a very good reason for thinking of dithering as being alarming.

Happiness—Is It Just a Matter of Waiting to Meet Your Double?

Doubles play an unexpected and strong role in the lore, in the imagery, and in the life of waiting. Perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprised by the prominence of doubles for waiting. Is this because waiting is an experience that’s built on pairs? You wait for someone or for something and just sometimes they are just like you or just like some part of you that you’re missing. Maybe if you can understand that double you can understand that part of yourself. Doubling, it looks like, is no panacea for unhappiness—but sometimes it can be. Maybe this is as it should be for waiting.

Miles Davis Breaks for a Smoke

This chapter will be about pausing—it will focus mostly on waiting in performance and how this strategy can benefit the performance, and how as well it can benefit an audience’s experience of the performance—and how the power of the pausing can engender pleasure in the listeners. Pausing looks to the resumption of activity and is a period of waiting that takes place within, and sometimes at the beginning of some longer activity. This sort of pausing is also characterized by anticipation. That’s something the performer may feel, but it’s something that the audience seem to feel just as much, sometimes even more. This sort of a pause is a very exciting experience for the listener and the viewer, in music, in speaking, and in art.

Alan Rabinowitz and the Jaguar

What is it in a human brain that allows some individuals to like to wait when placed in a situation where most people, consumed by fear, would bolt? There are two brain chemicals that appear to enable an individual’s capacity to wait. Both seem to do this by “modulating” ort enabling the value of waiting for a reward to come. There are two great enablers of waiting, the neuromodulators dopamine and serotonin. In this chapter I’ll attempt to exemplify the operation of the neuromodulator serotonin in the life of the scientist, author, and big cat expert, Alan Rabinowitz. Fort the operation of dopamine, I’ll look at, amongst others, the famous sniper, Chris Kyle.

Heaven Can Wait

In this chapter the focus moves to the empty chair, a symbol of death and of the departed. The author’s opinion is that there is no link to be found between waiting and the perception of the beyond, the afterlife, the transcendental, or even God, let alone the empty chair. Waiting, waiting for God, as it’s understood by some of the thinkers of this chapter, is little more than a situation, a handy idea, an idealized process, a mere symbol. Symbols are anyone’s business. Symbols can lead as readily to pornography as to the afterlife. In all of this the empty chair has been forgotten.

Hall Porter Senf’s Wife Is in Labor

Where marriage, and babies, and friendship are at issue, the capacity to wait turns out to be very important. It appears to be the case, for marriage, for looking to babies, and for friendship, that you won’t stay with them—wait for them this is to say—unless you’ve had a lot of practice at affiliative interaction. In this chapter the author will attempt to illustrate how affiliative interaction becomes so important in the lives of some primates, vervet monkeys in this case, but also the endearing Hall Porter Senf from Vicki Baum’s novel, Grand Hotel. They demonstrate well that, if you haven’t stayed—waited—you won’t have managed any affiliative interaction.

“Everyone Is Just Waiting”

This chapter focuses on the experience of waiting rather than on the situation. Here is the author’s definition of waiting (with a little thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary online): “waiting entails the emotional experience of a situation that involves staying where you are until a particular time or event or until the arrival of a particular person—or both.” This definition places as much stress on the emotional situation of waiting as it does on the situation. The chapter focuses on three ways of representing this experience: through pairing, pausing, and fear.