“Master your mind or it will master you.” ~Buddha
Sometimes I wake before dawn and lie still, listening for signs that the house is awake.
Coughing in the hallway.
Account opening sound.
The water flows softly in the kitchen sink.
My mother is now ninety-seven years old, and before my feet even touch the floor, a part of me is listening for evidence that the world hasn’t changed overnight.
If I hear movement, I blow out the air.
Only then do I reach for my phone.
I tell myself I’m just checking the messages. But lately I’ve found that I’m usually looking for something completely different.
Relief.
Email from an editor. Answer about work. A call. A possibility. Some suggest that the future is still opening up, not slowly shrinking.
Usually there is nothing.
Or almost nothing.
Spam. Medical reminder. Discounted offer. Silence disguised as activity.
One morning recently, I was standing in the kitchen updating my inbox while my coffee chilled untouched by my side. I’ve watched it several times before sunrise. I knew there was no reason to watch it again. Even so, my thumb automatically trailed down, as if certainty might finally emerge if I repeated the motion enough times.
Update.
Nothing.
Update.
Nothing.
Outside, the world remained completely ordinary. The neighbor was walking the dog. Somewhere on the street, a car door closed. The light slowly entered the room.
But something inside me was tight.
I’ve never been good at waiting. Not an ordinary wait. No lines, traffic or late appointments. I mean the deeper kind—the anticipation that depends on forces beyond your control.
Awaiting medical examinations.
He waits to see if his body deteriorates or stabilizes.
Waiting for old age.
He waits for the phone to ring.
Waiting for someone to respond with the same energy you gave them.
Waiting to find out if your work, your voice, or even your presence still matters in the world.
And behind all this is the expectation that we rarely admit out loud:
Waiting to lose.
The strange thing about waiting is that on the outside it looks like nothing is happening, but on the inside it can consume you for days.
The mind fills the silence with interpretation.
Maybe they don’t even care.
Maybe I waited too long in life.
You may have run out of options now.
Maybe I’ll turn invisible.
At some point, waiting is no longer time.
It becomes worth about.
It’s not the silence itself that worries me the most, but how quickly I leave the present and try to escape it. My mind is racing ahead, trying out futures that don’t exist yet. I imagine the disease getting worse. Financial collapse. Death. Loneliness. The quiet emptiness that may one day fill this house.
I try to solve tomorrow before today even arrives.
Buddhism calls this suffering dukkha— the profound inadequacy of trying to maintain an ever-changing still life. And below that is suffering tanha: desire. A desperate desire for certainty, determination, permanence.
I can physically feel the desire.
In the tight chest. In the restless refreshing of email. In the inability to settle into a single unfinished moment.
Buddha described five obstacles that cloud the mind, and as I wait I seem to encounter them all.
Restlessness prompts me to double check.
Doubt tells me that my value depends on my desirability.
Dislike makes him resent the silence itself.
Fear projects suffering into futures that have not happened.
And exhaustion quietly asks if the effort matters anymore.
All this does not change the reality. It just pulls me away from the life unfolding right in front of me.
One afternoon, after another spiral of checking messages and imagining the results, I finally turned my phone down on the table and sat still.
Not peacefully.
Just still.
I first noticed the tinnitus.
A faint, continuous ringing in my ears that I usually resist or try to ignore. But over time, through meditation and reading about Nada Yoga, the yoga practice of the inner voice, I began to approach it differently. Instead of just hearing irritation, sometimes I hear continuity. Current under the thought. A reminder that silence is never completely empty.
So I sat there and listened.
The ringing.
My breathing.
A bird outside.
My mother’s soft voice slowly travels through the house.
Nothing was resolved for a few moments.
The future remained uncertain. Emails were not answered. The body is vulnerable. Losses are still inevitable. But something softened.
I realized how much of my suffering did not come from waiting, but from not allowing the moment to remain unfinished.
I wanted peace before I lived. Security before trust. Guarantee before you settle into the sun.
But life never gave guarantees.
Just participation.
I am beginning to understand that the Eightfold Path is not about transcending ordinary life. It’s about learning how to stay present in it.
Right mindfulness means noticing the fear without fully becoming it.
Right effort means coming back gently when the mind races toward disaster again and again.
The right attitude means recognizing that impermanence is not a flaw in the system. That there is the system.
I still struggle.
Some mornings I wake up expecting grief before anything bad has happened. Sometimes I still update my inbox too often. Sometimes silence still feels personal. But now there are moments when I stop fighting the unfinished nature of life.
Moments when I simply listen.
To the ringing of my ears. To my own breathing. To the sounds of my mother, who is still alive in the next room.
And slowly the wait becomes something else.
It’s not a punishment.
Not paralysis.
Exercise.
The practice of staying in the present while the mind escapes into certainty.
It’s the practice of recognizing that value cannot depend entirely on answers, recognition, or guarantees about the future.
The practice of staying here for the fragile life that is already happening.
Happiness still comes and goes for me. But tranquility requires less.
It doesn’t require answers. It does not require permanence. You don’t even have to wait for it to end.
Just attention.
Just presence.
Just the willingness to stay in this moment before rushing to the next.
So on these days when I find myself reaching out again—for reassurance, for a solution, for proof that everything is going to be okay—I try to take a break.
i’m listening
The ringing. The breath. The small sounds of life around me.
And for a moment the silence no longer seems empty.
You feel alive.
About Tony Collins
Edward “Tony” Collins, EdD, MFA, is a documentary filmmaker, author, educator, and advocate for people with disabilities living with progressive vision loss due to macular degeneration. His works explore presence, care, flexibility and the quiet power of small moments. She currently writes books on creative scholarship and collaborative documentary filmmaking, and shares personal essays on meaning, hope, and disability on Substack. Connection: substack.com/@iefilm | iefilm.com
