🌀 Spiral Reflections: Waiting Is Not Neutral.

Eric’s Corner Wednesday-December-24-2025 Reflections from the Spiral.

Waiting feels like nothing is happening.
That is why it is easy to underestimate.
Nothing looks different on the surface.
No obvious movement.
No visible progress.
Just time passing, quietly, without announcing itself.
But waiting is not neutral.
When we wait, we are still choosing a posture.
Still leaning in a direction.
Still allowing some things closer and letting others drift further away.
Even when we tell ourselves we are doing nothing, something is happening underneath.
Tone changes before words do.
Energy shifts before decisions are made.
Replies shorten.
Patience thins.
Warmth cools by degrees too small to notice in the moment.
Not enough to cause alarm.
Just enough to register later, when the distance feels real and we cannot quite remember when it began.
We often describe waiting as generosity.
As restraint.
As giving something space to become what it needs to be.
Sometimes that is true.
But time is not empty.
Time records everything.
It remembers every moment we held back instead of reaching.
Every moment we softened instead of spoke.
Every moment we told ourselves it was better to wait than to move.
Waiting is not the absence of movement.
It is movement slowed enough to be mistaken for stillness.
And eventually something turns.
Not always because we decided.
Not always because anyone acted.
Sometimes it turns because waiting carried us there, quietly shaping the outcome long before we noticed it had begun.
Thank you for turning,
For reading,
For listening,
For spiraling with me,
Eric.
P.S. Waiting leaves fingerprints even when it looks invisible. If this reflection landed, a comment helps it find others standing inside the same quiet stretch.