Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

Today, I was texting a friend in California, and I said, I'm just waiting for things to happen,

and she said, yes, I know that feeling. I've been waiting for the world to ride itself.

And I thought, I bet a lot of us are doing that.

There are so many things.

Adam doesn't really understand the concept of plague.

In fact, we had to explain the concept of germs to him

when the pandemic hit.

So we just call it the sickness. When the sickness is over,

we will do X, Y, and Z. When we X, Y, and Z, for you non-Americans, look at how I can speak both

languages. It's amazing. No, it's not. But I think a lot of people have been saying, when pick your poison, really,

when the fires stop in California,

when we're all out of COVID lockdown,

when there is finally justice in the American social and political system.

You're like, when this happens, life will be so much better.

And it's true.

And it's worth waiting for those things.

But the problem is that if you focus just on waiting,

life becomes absolutely unbearable,

which is why waiting rooms are such notoriously

unpleasant places. If you do any meditation, you will eventually hear people telling you to

use meditation in a waiting room, because waiting rooms are awful. And the reason they're so awful

...