Waiting for the Sky to Clear

The other day in Miami, I was about to go for a walk when I looked out the window and saw that the sky had turned dark. I picked up my phone to check the forecast. Rain. I put it down on the table and decided it would be better to wait a while.

It rained. That Miami rain that seems capable of putting an end to every plan for the day. Then it eased, and a little light returned to the sky. I was still inside.

By then, I had found other things to do. A message to answer, something to read, a small task that suddenly seemed urgent. The rain had stopped being an obstacle long before I stopped using it as an explanation.

I found myself thinking about how easily we wait.

There is a particular comfort in having a good reason to postpone something. It allows us to stay where we are without fully feeling that we are choosing to stay. We can tell ourselves we want to move forward, that we will do it as soon as conditions change. Meanwhile, the responsibility seems to lie elsewhere: with the weather, the time available, all those things still waiting to be sorted out.

When it comes to a walk, the consequence is fairly modest. In other parts of our lives, that wait can last for years.

I think of a relationship in which we begin to feel we no longer want to stay. Sometimes we know it long before we can say it. We keep sharing our days, making small plans, talking about what is immediately in front of us. The important conversation is put off until after the vacation, until the other person is doing better, until we can explain ourselves without causing hurt.

We want to find a considerate way to leave. But we may end up waiting for a separation without sadness, without guilt, without any loss. A departure everyone understands and no one suffers from. While we look for that moment, we keep sustaining a life that feels less and less our own.

Something similar can happen with a job. We know we do not want to continue, that something in us is fading within that routine. Yet there is always a reason to hold on a little longer. Until the year ends. Until things improve. Until an opportunity comes along that feels safe enough. The question of what we want gets buried beneath another: how much longer we can bear it.

These decisions carry emotional ties, responsibilities, and practical needs. Leaving may require savings, help, difficult conversations, an alternative that does not yet exist. Preparing to leave is also a way of moving forward. What troubles me is the point at which we stop preparing and simply begin getting used to things.

Because we can even get used to living in a state of waiting.

With projects, that delay is often easier to disguise. A few pages get another edit. An idea needs a little more research. We can keep ourselves busy for hours and finish the day satisfied with our effort, while the thing we truly wanted to do remains exactly where it was.

I know that way of putting things off. The ability to find a reasonable argument for every delay. Taken separately, they all sound sensible. Together, they can become a way of life.

I think part of the difficulty lies in what a decision makes real. While we imagine another path, we can still make it perfect. Once we choose it, the limitations, mistakes, and consequences appear. So does the possibility of missing something we left behind, even while remaining certain about our decision to leave.

Perhaps that is why moving is so hard. We want a certainty that will protect us from regret as well.

And so we keep consulting our own private forecast. We look for a sign, a coincidence, someone who will assure us that things will turn out well. Sometimes we ask for advice about the same thing several times, hoping to hear an answer that will let us decide without feeling afraid.

I find the word self-sabotage difficult because it sounds deliberate, as if some part of us were devoted to ruining our plans. What I recognize in myself is more discreet. Fear can sound remarkably sensible. It can speak of patience, of responsibility, of waiting a little longer. Listening to it means distinguishing how much it is trying to protect us from how much it is deciding for us.

Lately, I find it useful to ask myself what I am doing while I wait. Whether I am gathering what I need, understanding more clearly what I want, seeking help. Or whether I am simply letting the days pass in the hope that someone, or something, will make the decision for me.

I looked out the window again. The street was wet. The sky was still gray, and it could rain again. I went out and closed the door behind me.

The streets of the condominium community were almost empty, as they usually are. There were few people around. I walked among the houses, in that familiar quiet, listening to the water still dripping from the trees.

After a few minutes, a few drops began to fall again. I kept walking. I thought about how much time I had spent watching the sky, and how little that rain changed my walk now.

Some decisions need far more preparation than going for a walk. Some change our lives and affect other people too. But that afternoon, in something small, I recognized a habit of mine: asking the moment for a certainty it could hardly give me.

When I got home, I entered the door code and went inside. The sky still had not cleared.

I had already taken my walk.

Christian Ruggeri