The morning bustle of the coffee shop hit the melancholy January blues right out of me. I was meeting a friend at our usual spot—and by usual, I mean the yearly meet-up we get to have since she’s moved away. In the overflow of chatter, rattling glasses, and screaming milk, I saw her sitting perfectly still, looking straight at me, like a doe in a forest, waiting for you to see it.
Usually, I find conversations sitting directly across from people intimidating. The silence stretches like bubblegum and my gaze can only escape to invisible dust on the corner of the table. But with her, there is no where else I would rather be, than directly across from her, in front of her almond shaped eyes, always twinkling with mischief and artistic muse. Our conversations start off logical and reasonable— what is up with you, how has your life been? But I think our minds are connected on some invisible string, and it quickly turns into an invigorating ping pong match of bouncing off our artistic projects, ideas, and life philosophies from of each other. From what she showed me this year, I realized she has a poet’s soul and a photographer’s eye—able to pick up on the most minute details and describe them in phrases that touch the heart.
I was telling her about my frustration with creating—how many feelings, images, and words I had swirling in my head that I wanted to bring to life. If only I had the time, I sighed. If only I didn’t have university right now, maybe I could do it. But she reminded me that ideas take time.
Ideas are stubborn little creatures. They arrive on their own terms, at their own timing. They aren’t meant to be squeezed out half-formed, gasping for air. They need to be full and ripe, with lungs strong enough to cry out and hands ready to grasp hold of the world. They’re like babies. You don’t rush them. You let them grow in the placenta of the mind, fed by the deep undercurrents of your dreams, your thoughts, your filtered reality.
It’s okay to let things percolate, to be protected and secret where they can stretch and form all the parts they’ll need to make it. It’s tempting in a world that worships speed and productivity to believe that waiting is a failure. That if there is no tangible progress, no “failing fast” no “breaking things,” then we are too slow and ripe for extinction. Active waiting—when we hold space for the reordering of our minds, the recalibration of our imagination—might be the very thing that makes us ready.
Perhaps it is not the idea that needs time, but us. We need to come into our full form to deliver the idea. What if the waiting isn’t for the idea to grow, but for me to grow? Some ideas demand more of us than we know how to give in the moment. They require us to stretch, to deepen, to break apart and rebuild ourselves in ways we didn’t anticipate. They ask us to learn more, to live more, to feel more. They ask us to meet them as equals—not as rushed, fragile versions of ourselves, but as the strong, clear vessels they need us to be.
Wasn’t I, after all, merely the doorway through which the idea entered? As the creator, I wasn’t meant to wrestle it out of me, but to prepare myself for its arrival. What if the waiting wasn’t only for the preparation of the idea, but so that I would be prepared for it? My task wasn’t to struggle or to force, but to become sturdy and open, like a gate swinging wide to welcome something greater than myself. When the moment came, I would be ready to meet it, to cradle it in my hands, and to whisper, “Yes, it is time now. Welcome.”