The Waiting

"Agent Mulder died late last night of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

That quote by Agent Scully in May of 1997 began the longest summer of my life.  Agents Mulder and Scully were the two lead characters on The X-Files, the greatest TV series ever created.  Scully's tearful words were the fourth season's final line of the final episode, leaving fans to wonder if the show's protagonist had indeed blasted himself into oblivion or if it was yet another lie within a lie so commonly found in X-Files mythology.  This was before Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, and Internet forums were still relatively new.  Plenty of X-Philes, true fans of the show, were able to communicate with each other on the topic, and some may have even been able to find out what the future held for David Duchovny, the actor who played Mulder.  Compared to the ease with which information is shared today, however, fans were mostly in the dark about the finale's truth (the truth is out there!).  The darkness was deeper for this fan - my loyalty to the show was unmatched by anyone in my family or circle of friends, and I had very little access to the Internet.  So the summer crawled by one agonizing day at a time as I waited and anticipated and hungered for the answer to such a life-altering mystery.

Last night was the seventh season premier of The Walking Dead, a show giving The X-Files a strong challenge as the greatest TV series of all time.  I love the show, but I don't watch it on TV - I get my TWD fix via Netflix, meaning I am not "in the know" about last night's episode.  Colleagues were talking about it today, there were tweets galore in my Twitter feed about it...luckily I've avoided spoilers so far.  But how different this experience is....talking like Yoda I am.....two terrific shows enjoyed two entirely different ways.  

As much as I love TWD I am always regretful that I didn't climb on board the fan train sooner so I could relish the suspense from week to week and season to season.  But how many of us really do that anymore?  My colleagues offered to let me binge-watch all of season six today rather than attend to the professional development in front of us...gracious of them, but no thanks.  My TV binging is done four episodes at a time on the one Netflix disc that arrives every few days in the mailbox that hangs on my house, not inside my computer.  Yes, I'm still a non-streaming, disc-mailing Netflix customer.  I apologize for nothing (apology is policy!)  Streaming would be nice, being on the same page as the other fans of TWD would be fun...but there's something bigger at play here.  I like having the strength to wait until "later" or "soon", a rarity in this culture of "NOW!!"

I went archery hunting for deer this past weekend....you knew the hunting angle was coming, didn't you?  A few hours for several evenings was as much as I was able to get out to a stand - it was kind of like a warm-up for the long days of rifle season next month.  In the short time I hunted I discovered many differences between hunting with a bow and hunting with a rifle - a topic for a different post - but there was one solid similarity: the wait.  I absolutely love to hunt for deer, but I sum up the activity with a rather bleak truth - deer hunting is a few minutes of excitement surrounded by a whole lot of nothing.  The ability to consistently be successful at hunting is directly related to how well a hunter can handle the wait.  I struggled with this for many years as a hunter; I simply could not, or would not, wait long enough for the deer to arrive at the spot I thought they should.  When I finally gained the strength to endure five hours, six hours, eight hours of waiting the results of my hunts improved.  But like my Netflix account, my style of hunting is becoming a rarity.

We don't like to wait, do we?  We want to watch the whole season NOW!  We want our burgers and fries NOW!  We want score updates NOW!  We want to see a deer NOW!  Baiting deer, an illegal activity during hunting season, becomes a bigger problem each year.  Road hunting (driving around hoping to shoot a deer from the vehicle - also illegal) has always been a problem but has become harder to patrol with the increase in all terrain vehicles; cover more area quicker and see more deer NOW!  Hunting associations want higher deer numbers so hunters can see more deer more often.  Antler point restrictions are desired so hunters can have a better chance at getting a mature (big) buck, i.e. hunters don't want to wait as long to get a trophy.  In the early 80's Tom Petty crooned "The waiting is the hardest part."  Sorry Tom, nobody wants to hear that anymore.

Waiting requires discipline and self-regulation.  If we are a culture of NOW what does that say about our discipline?  What future does a society without discipline hope to enjoy?  I realize our futures will become much more bleak on or around November 8 (trust no one!) but maybe this will be the perfect opportunity, as a nation, to overcome our desire for NOW!  While we wait four years for a decent leader to emerge from somewhere....anywhere....maybe we can begin waiting an extra hour to watch that next episode.  Maybe you can keep your phone in your pocket a few extra minutes each time you hear the "ping" of a new whatever those pings are for.  And maybe, hopefully, more of you will begin to seek out activities like hunting or fishing; activities that, when done properly, create strength and discipline through waiting, traits needed to lead, to follow, and to live.  Yes Tom, the waiting is the hardest part...but it is the most empowering part.