Waiting for the Miracle to Come

You may be aware of a certain feeling. It tells you: the real life is coming. Not this, not yet, but it’s approaching. You’ve been waiting for the real life a long time, and it’s coming, and there will be a lot of sunbeams too. You didn’t experience it yet. It’s okay, you are not ready yet, you first need to get prepared properly. Rehearse a lot. But it’s coming for sure. It has to be. Very, very soon, it’s coming. It must come. Right?

One of Leonard Cohen’s songs is called “Waiting for the Miracle” which is precisely the idea I’m trying to talk about here.

When the girl was smiling at you on the bus – the feeling said: “let’s not smile back and say hi, not now, there’ll be a better time.” Or the following naked statements stripped of the bullshit we add to them: “I will try it, maybe, but it’s stupid” or “I’m not gonna try a lot, let’s see” or “I’m not gonna give it my best, because…”

Then it never comes, and it’s too late, and you are dead. Your life slipped by.

What is the feeling actually saying: if you never really start to do things you want to do, fully committed with your full power, you never discover your actual limits and you get to keep the fantasy that you could have been extraordinary. The moment you commit fully and fail, that comfortable ambiguity collapses. It’s a bargain with yourself.

Nietzsche found this bargain absolutely disgusting. The Last Man dies warm and safe, still waiting for the miracle to come.

Seneca, quoting Epicurus, wrote about this problem too: “The fool, with all his other faults, has this also - he is always getting ready to live.”

So, what to do?

To stop waiting for the miracle to come, stop waiting for the miracle to come.