Waiting for the Unkown

By Rawan Albina (@RawanAlbina)

I read “Waiting for Godot” at university and I must admit that I found it to be the most boring piece of literature I had ever read. It is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. I always wondered why on earth do they even bother including such a book in any curriculum but I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the play had been interpreted in many different ways and was actually voted “The most significant English language play of the 20^th century.”

So much for my opinion as a student who had to get bored waiting for Godot to show up!

Of the many interpretations, some of them were political while others were psychological, philosophical and religious. The interpretations are very interesting and you can read more about them on Wikipedia so I will not get into them here. What I am interested in portraying here is how waiting for Godot started making sense to me over the years.

In my non-philosophical way of looking at it, waiting for Godot simply meant wasting your life waiting for that something that would never come. Waiting and expecting are two keywords here. It is amazing how many people I have met build their entire life around expectations. Playing a passive role in their own life because they believe that things will naturally happen; it is only a matter of time before what they want to achieve becomes a reality. Of course it is important to dream and trust that what you set your intention for will happen. But remember, that will not be without an active participation on your side.

Waiting for a promotion, a new job, a partner, waiting for your life to change or simply waiting for your luck to turn around. Waiting for things to get better because you know that you have always been a God-fearing, law-abiding person that never hurt anyone so what you are expecting out of life and what you want is bound to happen!

Well, I have got news for you. Nothing is bound to happen. You were bound to happen so you were born and then it is entirely up to you to figure out what your life purpose is and where you fit in the big picture. It might seem greener on the other side and sometimes in life you might get confused about what you should be doing because you keep getting those mixed signals. Remember that the most important thing here is to keep moving and never simply stop and wait because in most cases you will just be waiting in vain.

So Godot could be anyone or anything really. Godot could be the weather, a friend, fate or your boss. It could be joy, success, happiness or money. Godot, the way I see it, is simply the unknown, the expected that does not even exist yet and might never happen; which means that Godot has the power to disappoint time after time.

Someone once said, “It takes time to extract joy from life.” Although time passing might sometimes give you the impression that you are waiting for Godot, as long as you are actively extracting joy from life and sucking it all in, there is nothing to worry about. The unknown will soon be known and Godot might turn out to be a long lost friend that you would finally be very happy to see!

June 2011’s issue:

Here We Start – Community Talk – Food for Thought – Just Another Undergrad
Living Through The Eyes of Art – Microscopic Me – Scenes From Life
Society of Tomorrow – To The Point – Words, Observations, and Ramblings