Learning to Wait

How to Embrace the Uncertainty Between Effort and Reward

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

We aren't taught how to wait.

We are a society of doers, achievers, make-things-happeners. Productivity is our currency. Action gets rewarded. But just as a conversation isn't a monologue, neither is life. We put our efforts out into the world, and sometimes—often—there is a pause before the response. A waiting period. A space where something is happening, but not on our timeline.

You can apply for jobs, go on dating apps, decide to start a family. These are active, visible efforts, things we can point to and say, Look, I am doing something. But the results aren’t ours alone. We can plant seeds, but we can’t force them to bear fruit. And yet, we don’t have a model for that space between effort and outcome. No ritual for patience. No societal recognition for trusting the process.

But nature does.

Spring arrives this week in the northern hemisphere. The equinox tips the balance in favor of light and warmth, and nature responds. The crocuses push up through the earth, buds appear on trees. We take it for granted that this will happen, never doubting that the quiet work of winter will yield something when the time is right. We don’t dig up the roots in January to make sure they’re progressing. We trust the unseen process.

Why not so with our own lives? Why do we struggle to believe that forces might be moving on our behalf, that progress is happening beneath the surface even when we can’t see it?

Maybe because we love control. Or at least the illusion of it. Meritocracy feeds this illusion, promising that effort equals reward, that success is simply a matter of working hard enough, optimizing enough, strategizing enough. But every farmer knows otherwise. Some seeds don’t sprout. Same soil, same sun, same conditions—yet some flourish while others never break through. It’s not just about effort.

The ancient Greeks had a goddess for this: Fortuna. Today, the idea of honoring a deity who determines luck seems absurd, primitive. And yet, Fortuna’s most striking feature was her blindfold. She bestowed her favor at random, indifferent to effort, unmoved by merit. This wasn’t meant to be cruel, just true. There are forces beyond us that shape outcomes, and no amount of striving can bend them entirely to our will.

I have a niece applying to colleges right now. Thousands of kids are. I look at them—4.4 GPAs, 1500+ SATs—and I see rejection letters pouring in. By today’s standards, my teenage self wouldn’t have gotten into the school I attended. I think about how these kids have been told, Work hard and it will pay off. And now they are learning, in the harshest way, that it’s not always so simple.

Maybe that’s why we struggle with waiting. Because waiting requires surrender. It asks us to accept that we are not the sole architects of our fate. That there is effort, yes, but also mystery. That we can do everything right and still, sometimes, things won’t go our way. And that, unsettling as it may be, doesn’t mean we did something wrong.

But here’s the problem—we have no ritual for waiting. No practice for trusting. No societal script for what to do in the in-between, when the work has been done, the seeds planted, and all that’s left is time.

Ancient cultures understood waiting as part of the cycle. Farmers knew there was nothing to do after sowing but to tend, watch, and trust. Indigenous tribes had rites of passage marking the transition from one state to another. Even Fortuna, as frustrating as she was, at least gave people a way to surrender to the forces beyond their control. But today? We are left only with anxiety and more effort, as if pushing harder against the unknowable will make it yield.

And yet, nature has never been in a hurry. The longest winters give way to the most spectacular springs. The trees that take years to bear fruit produce the sweetest harvest.

Maybe the real work is not just in the doing but in the waiting. In learning to sit in that uncertain space and trust that something is quietly ripening beneath the surface, even when we can’t yet see it.

Joshua Earle (@joshuaearle) | Unsplash Photo Community