The waiting game

The waiting game. It’s a game we play all our lives for millions of different reasons and it’s a game when the result can never be predicted.

Trying to get pregnant. The crippled-with-fear-every-second wait until the date of your expected period comes and goes, followed by the agonising two minute wait to see if there are two lines on the pregnancy test purchased in terrified excitement that morning.

Expectant mothers play the waiting game to welcome a new life into the world. The books tell us 280 days or 40 weeks, but head into any maternity hospital in the world and it will show you that it can be anywhere from 21 to 42 weeks. And, if you have been there, who can forget the anxiety as you wait to hear your baby make it’s first sound and hear the medical staff tell you that your child is healthy.

Life is the ultimate waiting game.

We wait for meals, we wait for sunrise, we wait for phone calls, we wait for sunsets, we wait for news, we wait for trains, trams, buses, aeroplanes, friends, family, television programs, heating, cooling, taxis, ubers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, service, coffee, new teeth, loosing teeth, children to take their first step, children to say their first word, people to stop talking, rain to fall, rain to stop, the sun to come out, the heat to be over, the cold weather to arrive, the spring, the roses to bloom, the full moon, the computer to boot up, the light to come on, the shower to be the right temperature, the microwave to beep, the traffic lights to change, the cars to move, the Bulldogs to win a premiership, the first kiss, the first love, the first alcoholic drink, the engagement proposal, the wedding, the honeymoon, the romantic dinners, the fight to be over, the ‘please’, the ‘thank you’, the honesty, the understanding, the lemons to ripen on the tree, the tide to turn, the fish to bite, the fire to catch, the candle to melt, the hurt to pass, the smoke to clear, the exam to be over, the plaster to set, the starting pistol, the wound to heal, the results to be announced, the bleeding to stop, the bad haircut to grow out, the shift to be over, the battery to run out, the weekend, the extra kilo to be gone, the holiday to begin………………….

But the most unpredictable of all the waiting games is our life expectancy. There are those who never get the chance to take a breath in this world and those who continue to breathe until they have breathed longer than everyone they know.

It’s Russian Roulette. One day there is going to be a bullet in the barrel and that’s it…….. your waiting game with life is over. And nobody, not even you, knows when that day will come and what form the bullet will take.

So we play the game. We spin the barrel on the pistol.

We are the game.