Waiting in the recession: the process of powerlessness

Waiting is something we do as people.

Webster essentially defined waiting to stand expectantly of something.

I decided that waiting is a period of time (whether defined or open-ended) where an expectation is unfilled, and you are powerless to fill the expectation in the here and now.

In its most basic sense waiting is painful. To wait means to suffer some sort of distress or discomfort while your need or expectation is unfulfilled. This is not necessarily delayed gratification—the things we wait for in a recession have little to do with pleasure, but with security needs and the need to feel secure.

Not all pain is equal. Waiting for a cup of tea in the microwave is not the same as waiting for the prospective employer to call with a job offer. The more something matters, the more pain.
Little kids in their impulsive natures have great difficulty waiting. Generally the average, mature adult can cope with waiting, especially if it is a simple matter. An adult in the western world generally has the expectation that it will take the microwave oven two minutes to boil the water. If you want to have the cup of tea, you will wait and you will be calm about it.

The development of coping through development of emotional maturing leads to tolerating waiting. A child's mind is not an adult's mind. Children do not handle waiting as well as adults do as a rule.

In the context of the recession, waiting concerns oppression. The oppression seems to add more complication to waiting. The rules change.

What especially makes waiting in a recession hard is the powerlessness. When there is not a recession, we have numerous choices because we have the power of money and can more easily make money.

The recession is like making a stop at a bad rural convenience store along the interstate because you have diarrhea. The place has putrid bathrooms and stale off-brand food and beverage items that are overpriced. If you complain about anything, the irritable owner-operator running the cash register will bluntly tell you to go someplace else. Pretty much people only stop there for the same reason and are stuck with the same few choices—but they make due because they have to.

There is no one oppressor that can be blamed in a recession. This is part of the powerlessness as you cannot identify the particular cause to do something. Furthermore, if you have lost your job and cannot get another job, you feel all the more oppression because you must conserve your resources as you are mindful that your unemployment insurance could run out before you find the next job.

The oppression cuts back on your ability to cope. It is an experience that gives you a taste of clinical depression, or it gives you a taste of what the emotional atmosphere is in the impoverished inner-city or ghetto areas that are also called “the hood.” Life is hard and you cannot stop but be mindful of that. You are surviving.

I think that there are two basic kinds of waiting in the recession. We tend to look expectantly for oppression to happen (more likely know as “the other shoe to drop”). Second, we also wait expectantly to be delivered from the oppression once it has happened. You may not even be sure what it is you are waiting for in the first place when you have a severe, unmet need that continues to increase in complexity?

In the waiting for the other shoe to drop, people tend to be anxious. They dwell on the fear of what if . . . what if . . . what if? They may dwell and are preoccupied on all the worst case scenarios or all of the possible negative scenarios their imagination will produce.
As a result their distress takes the form of being are edgy and guarded. (This is clearly a mode of survival.) They may drink more alcohol, smoke more cigarettes, engage in more stress eating.
They do not sleep at night. It is almost living in an 'already but not yet world,' where their emotions are with their thoughts in a future time and dimension despite causing bodily tension and stress in the present.

Once the shoe has dropped, waiting is a time of hoping for or expecting deliverance from the tyranny and oppression that a recession brings. There is the shock. There is the entertainment of regret: did I choose the right kind of career? I should have done this or that. There is depression where you feel stuck or helpless. Self-esteem is down the toilet. In essence, there is grief, but it is more than grief because it is more than your emotions.

I used to think that waiting was a process. However, a process also implies that you know what is supposed to happen? I do not think that anymore.

Appreciating the concept of waiting is more or less putting a name to the pain that we feel. The pain of the recession is more than just waiting because we hate that other people are having bad fortune, but the mind acts in ways that are that of waiting. This may be where we have to start.

What do we do? It is not easy. Essentially it is whatever we can in our own imperfect ways.