On Waiting
Harold Schweizer
Routledge
What do we do when we wait? What are we waiting for? Schweizer explored these questions which led him inexorably to the question of what waiting is. Waiting is an attendant of time, but this book is not a scientific or philosophic book about time. In focussing on waiting, the author reversed the principal importance of time and made it attendant to waiting; he used various stories and even a series of paintings (by Ferdinand Hodler, of his dying mistress Valentine) to express his view of waiting, and make us more accutely aware of what waiting is about. We can wait aimlessly for the arrival of an illusion as Vladimir and Estragon did in "Waiting for Godot", or we can wait purposefully, with equanimity, patience, and dignity as Penelope waited for Odysseus. Schweizer used Henri Bergson's dissolving lump of sugar to amplify the act of waiting. In Hodler's paintings we understand attention as an aspect of waiting even as each act of painting itself was a distraction; a thing we do while we wait. We no longer wait when we arrive or what we wait for has arrived. Ultimately, we all wait for death. What do we do while we wait? What distractions should we indulge ourselves in the interim? Whatever we do, we would, after reading Schweizer, be much more sensitive to what we do; and learn to appreciate the meaning of endurance, for, as Schweizer suggests, waiting is an act of endurance.