What are you waiting for?

f15eagle314
Dec 3, 2021
6 min read

Updated: Jan 10, 2022

Many of us can remember our childhoods quite clearly. How we grew up, who we spent time with, our schools, friends, and family. Being so young, we had very little responsibility. We didn't have to worry about putting food on the table, or make sure we can afford to live. All of that was taken care of by our parents or guardians. As we grew up, we received more responsibilities. We would be assigned more chores, we'd have to make sure we were successful in school, and so on. As we gain more responsibilities, we lost some of our freedom. We would have less time to play with our friends and enjoy ourselves. By the time we become adults, that free time has been reduced to an amount that barely resembles it's former self. If you ask most adults what their daily schedule looks like, they possibly will respond with a very repetitive day. Wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, do some other responsibilities, and then go to bed. The next day, this repeats. It repeats again, and again, and again, and again, on and on for a large portion of their lives.

A study says that it takes a person on average 66 days to form a new habit. If this is true, then after 66 days of one repetitive day, that whole day becomes habitual. The person no longer will think about what they are doing, their actions will simply become a habit. This isn't only true for adults, but students as well. Students wake up, go to school, come home, eat, do homework, then go to bed, and then repeat for a whole year. Of course what goes on at school and at work may differ from time to time, but most days might feel the same. I know this is true. Because I am a student. I cannot speak for everyone, but I am pretty sure that most of my fellow peers will agree with me that almost nothing separates the days apart from each other. They all repeat, over and over again. In our brain, the days just get muddled together and many days get mushed into one memory. Our daily lives become habits. Thus, our lives touch on one characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Absurdist plays can be summed up in one word: absurd. These plays contain no plot, no characterization, no traditions, nothing. They show what life would be like, if it was empty, cold, and dead. Absurdist plays leave the audience to wonder if anything is going to happen and whether there is any meaning in anything in the play or life. One of the characteristics of these plays is that habit is a great deadener. The events in the plays repeat without any consequence, drama, or plot. The play feels lifeless.

Samuel Becketts play "Waiting for Godot" offers a perfect example of an Absurdist play. In the play two characters named Vladimir and Estragon are to meet someone in the middle of no where by a tree. What are they waiting for? They only know that they are waiting for Godot. They don't know who Godot is or when he will come. All they know is that Godot will meet them at this tree. And so they wait for Godot. At one point two more characters, Pozo and Lucky, show up and talk with Vladimir and Estragon about the most random of things. After some conversation, the characters leave and Vladimir and Estragon are left waiting again by the tree. At the end of the day, Godot has still not showed up, but a boy comes and tells Vladimir and Estragon that Godot will come tomorrow. With this new news, Vladimir and Estragon decide to sleep and then wait again tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, the same events from the day before repeat. The play ends with a boy coming to Vladimir and Estragon telling them that Godot will come tomorrow. During the whole play the audience is waiting for Godot to show up just like Vladimir and Estragon. We know that once Godot comes, the plot will move on. Except Godot never comes, so everyone keeps on waiting.

Our lives become like absurdist plays. We go through our day over and over again waiting for something. We wait for the weekend to start, we wait for holidays, we wait for the future to come. We all wait for Godot. If our lives become like these plays that have no meaning. Then what meaning do our lives have? All we do is wait. We continuously waste our time doing thing over and over again. Going through our routine days and habits. These routines and habits become cancerous. They multiply and eat away at our precious time. We make up a routine for when we get up, what we do at work, and what time we eat our meals. We waste our time repeating the same actions we did yesterday.

The average person retires around the age of 60. Sixty years may seem like a lot of time to achieve what you want in life. But in reality, it is not that much time. If you look at one day from a persons life, they spend approximately 8 hours sleeping, and 8 hours work (if they have a regular 9-5 job). 8 + 8 = 16 hours. There are twenty four hours in a day so if you subtract the 16 hours from the 24 hours, you get 8 hours. If you roughly follow the same type of day for most of your life until age 60, then that means you spend 20 years sleeping, and 20 years going to work. That leaves you with 20 years to achieve all that you want in life. Now of course this doesn't account for necessities which you need to stay alive. So technically you have less than 20 years to achieve your goals. Once you do the math, you realize that we don't have as much time as we originally thought. The cancer of routine and habit eat away at two thirds of your life! All that time is gone. Time is non refundable, we can never get it back. So we need to spend it wisely. We can't waste time waiting for Godot.

As long as our lives are habitual and full of routines, then we will always be waiting for Godot. Waiting for the weekend, the holidays, the events, waiting, waiting, until the only thing left to wait for is Godot, wait for God to take us from this world and into the next. And once we finally reach God, that's it. Our absurdist play has ended and just like the plot of "Waiting for Godot" our meaningless lives stay meaningless. We can't waste our time waiting for Godot. We can't let the cancer of time to eat away the precious little time that we have. And so we need to start now. We need to start getting rid of the habits and routines in our lives. One third of our lives have already been taken away by sleep. Another third is taken up by our job. If our jobs are not very enjoyable or are just a regular 9-5 job, then we still get left with only one third of our life left. If your job is enjoyable and is something you look forward to, then you will have more than just a third of your life to add meaning to your life. Regardless of how much time we have to spend on what we want. We need to make sure that we spend every free moment we have adding meaning to our lives. The more we waste time, the more meaningless our lives become. We need to stop wasting our time with things that add no meaning to our lives. We need to stop waiting for Godot. We need to start now. Every moment we can spare should be spent doing something meaning full and enjoyable. This is the only way we can pull our lives from the absurdist play that we live in. We simply need to start now. They only question is: