“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” ~Buddha
Some mornings I wake up before dawn and lie still and listen for signals that the house is waking up.
There is a cough in the hallway.
Sound of drawer opening.
Water is flowing slowly in the kitchen sink.
My mother is now ninety-seven, and before my feet touch the floor, a part of me is already listening for evidence that the world hasn’t changed overnight.
I exhale when I hear movement.
That’s when I reach for my phone.
I tell myself I’m just checking the messages. But recently I’ve realized that I’m usually checking something else entirely.
relief.
An editor’s email. A feedback about the work. a call. An opportunity. Some indicate that the future is still opening up rather than gradually being limited.
Usually nothing.
Or almost nothing.
Unsolicited email. A medical reminder. A discount offer. Silence in the guise of activism.
One recent morning, I was standing in the kitchen refreshing my inbox while my coffee cooled next to me, untouched. I had already checked several times before sunrise. I knew there was no reason to look again. Still, my thumb pulled downwards on its own, as if if I repeated this motion enough times the certainty might eventually appear.
Refresh.
Nothing.
Refresh.
Nothing.
Outside the world remained completely normal. A neighbor was walking a dog. Somewhere down the road a car door slammed shut. Light slowly entered the room.
But something was tightening inside me.
I’ve never been good at waiting. Not a simple wait. No lines or traffic or delayed appointments. I mean the darker kind – the kind of waiting that depends on forces you can’t control.
Awaiting medical examination.
Waiting to see if your body will deteriorate or remain stable.
Waiting beside old age.
Waiting for the phone to ring.
Waiting for someone to respond with the same energy you brought to them.
Waiting to find out if your work, your voice or even your presence still matters in the world.
And beneath it all, the waiting we rarely admit out loud:
Loss awaits.
The strange thing about waiting is that outwardly nothing seems to happen, yet internally it can take a whole day.
The mind fills silence with interpretation.
Maybe they are not interested.
Maybe I waited too long in life.
Perhaps now the opportunities have run out.
Maybe I am becoming invisible.
At some point, waiting is just time.
It becomes almost valuable.
What bothers me most is not the silence, but how quickly I leave the present in an attempt to avoid it. My mind races ahead, rehearsing futures that don’t yet exist. I imagine the disease is getting worse. Financial collapse. Death. Loneliness. The quiet emptiness that will one day fill this house.
I try to solve tomorrow before today comes.
Buddhism calls it suffering dukkha– The deep dissatisfaction of trying to keep a life stable that is constantly changing. and beneath that is pain lonely: craving. A strong desire for certainty, resolution, stability.
I can physically feel the craving.
In a tight chest. In the unsettling freshness of email. In the inability to be still even for a single moment.
The Buddha described five obstacles that cloud the mind, and while waiting, I seem to meet them all.
Discomfort prompts me to check once again.
Doubt whispers that my value depends on being desired.
Hate makes me angry in silence.
Don’t be afraid of future projects that haven’t happened.
And exhaustion silently asks whether any effort matters anymore.
None of this changes reality. It pulls me even further away from life happening right in front of me.
One afternoon, after checking the messages and imagining the results, I finally put my phone on the table and sat quietly.
Not peacefully.
Still.
At first, I noticed the tinnitus.
There’s a thin, persistent ringing in my ears that I usually resist or try to ignore. But over time, through meditation and reading about Nada Yoga – the yogic practice of inner sound – I have begun to relate to it differently. Instead of just hearing irritation, I sometimes hear consistency. A stream beneath the thought. A reminder that silence is never completely empty.
So I sat there and started listening.
ringing up.
My breaths.
A bird outside.
My mother’s soft voice was slowly moving through the house.
For a few moments, nothing was resolved.
The future remained uncertain. Emails remain unanswered. Body weak. Loss is still inevitable. But still something softened.
I realized that much of my suffering came not from waiting, but from refusing to let the moment remain incomplete.
I wanted assurance before living. Certainty before trust. Guaranteed before resting during the day.
But life was never going to guarantee anything.
Participation only.
I am beginning to understand that the Eightfold Path is not about going beyond ordinary life. It’s about learning how to exist within it.
True mindfulness means paying attention to fear without being completely consumed by it.
Right effort means slowly turning back when the mind repeatedly runs towards disaster.
Right view means recognizing that impermanence in the system is not a mistake. it Is System.
I am still struggling.
Some mornings I wake up with a feeling of sadness before anything bad happens. Sometimes I still refresh my inbox frequently. Sometimes silence still feels personal. But now there come moments when I stop fighting the incomplete nature of life.
Moments when I just listen.
To ring in my ears. To my own breaths. The voices of my mother still alive in the next room.
And gradually the waiting becomes something different.
Not punishment.
No paralysis.
Practice.
The practice of being present when the mind tries to flee toward certainty.
The practice of realizing that value cannot depend solely on reactions, recognition or guarantees about the future.
The practice of staying here for the fragile life that is already happening.
For me, happiness still comes and goes. But peace demands less.
This does not require an answer. It does not require stability. There is no need for the wait to end for this.
Only meditation.
Appearance only.
The desire to simply remain within this moment before running off to the next moment.
So these days, when I feel confident again, for solutions, for proof that everything will be okay, I try to hold on.
I listen.
ringing up. breath. Little sounds of life going on all around me.
And the silence does not feel like emptiness even for a moment.
It feels alive.
About Tony Collins
Edward “Tony” Collins, EdD, MFA, is a documentary filmmaker, author, teacher, and disability advocate living with progressive vision loss from macular degeneration. Her work explores presence, care, resilience and the quiet power of small moments. He is currently completing books on creative scholarship and collaborative documentary filmmaking and shares personal essays about meaning, hope, and disability on Substack. Add: substack.com/@iefilm | iefilm.com
