The Moment I’ve Been Waiting For...

or, The curtain is already open, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!

It seems as though most people—myself included—are waiting for what might be called a messianic moment. I don’t necessarily mean a religious figure riding in on a donkey or a cloud. I mean something quieter, more personal: the imagined moment after which everything will finally make sense. The raise. The relationship. The clean bill of health. The unexpected windfall or the long-overdue recognition. If only I had X, I tell myself, then my real life could begin.

There’s a deeply human comfort in this kind of waiting. It carries with it the unspoken belief that I’m not yet accountable for my full self. That the version of me capable of love, courage, creativity—the version not paralyzed by doubt—is just beyond reach, waiting for the right conditions. The right weather system of circumstances.

It’s a beautiful lie.

And also, it’s not entirely untrue.

The waiting is the hardest part

Because I am waiting. There is a veil of some kind. A curtain. A fog. Something that feels like separation from the life I was meant to live. But what if I’ve misunderstood the source of the delay? What if the thing I’m waiting for isn’t out there, but already present—already happening—just slightly obscured by habit, by fear, by inertia?

I’ve heard the stories, seen the movies, and read the old texts. The pattern is familiar: the end of suffering doesn’t come through conquest, but through awakening. Through seeing what was always there. Not a new reality, but a new way of seeing the existing one. What if the “messianic moment”—whatever that means for me—isn’t a time stamp or a grand arrival, but a sudden, tectonic shift in perception? A lifting of the veil?

It may be that I’ve been confusing the miracle with the precondition. I think: Once the miracle happens, then I’ll be ready. But maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the act of readiness is the miracle. Maybe it starts when I say: I’m going to step onto the stage, even if I don’t feel entirely prepared. I’m going to love before I feel perfectly safe. I’m going to create before I feel completely certain. I’m going to show up before I feel fully worthy.

I don’t mean this in the hustle-culture, crush-the-day, “brain-hack” (how I dislike that phrase) sense. This isn’t about achieving my goals before breakfast. It’s about something far more elusive: the moment I remember that I’m already in the very thing I’ve been waiting for. When I look up and realize the stage is already set, the musicians already tuned, and I am not in the audience—I am part of the play.

And the curtain? Ladies and gentlemen, it’s already open. It’s been open as long as I’ve been alive.

Nowhere to hide

There’s a kind of electricity in that thought. A tension. Because it means there’s no more hiding. No more waiting for the world to give me permission. And it also means: this might be it. Not some dress rehearsal. Not some holding pattern. This is the field, the moment, the page on which everything happens.

Some traditions speak of light hidden in the world—a subtle, scattered brightness embedded in the everyday. The task isn’t to manufacture meaning, but to notice it. To see it glowing in a child’s question, in the pattern of leaves on a city sidewalk, in the inexplicable tenderness that rises for someone I barely know.

I don’t need to name it for it to be real.

I don’t need to believe in it to participate.

And yet, I often live like a passenger on a train that hasn’t yet departed. I fidget. I plan. I tell myself that when I arrive at the real destination—the better version of myself—then I’ll finally speak the truth. Then I’ll take the risk. Then I’ll start to live in earnest.

But what if this—take three seconds to look around—is it?

What if the great secret is that the moment I’ve been waiting for has been waiting for me?

There’s a peculiar kind of absurdity built into all this. A cosmic humor. I spend years preparing for the life I hope will one day begin, only to realize that life is not a ceremony with a fixed starting time. It’s a conversation already underway—and has been, with or without my full attention.

And if I listen closely, I can almost hear a voice say: You weren’t late. You were just looking in the wrong direction.

An invitation to wait better

So the invitation, if there is one, isn’t to strive harder or to wait better. It’s simply to pause and look again. To consider the possibility that the miracle I’ve been hoping for is not a change in circumstance, but a change in the quality of attention. A gentle retuning of the instrument. A quiet acceptance that the present moment is not a placeholder, but the actual canvas of my life.

This isn’t to deny the difficulty. Some wounds are real, horribly so. And yes, some things truly must change—politically, physically, interpersonally. But even in the midst of that, perhaps especially in the midst of that, there remains this other truth: that something luminous may be happening just beneath the surface of things, waiting only for my willingness to see.

And to act.

Because once I stop waiting and start inhabiting, even the smallest gesture becomes part of the larger unfolding. Waking up in the morning becomes a ritual. A phone call becomes a reunion. A single honest sentence—finally spoken—becomes a kind of liberation.

I don’t need to call this salvation, or enlightenment, or redemption. I don’t need to call it anything at all.

But I want to notice it.

It seems worth remembering—gently, quietly—that I’m already here.

And the band is ready. Ready to rock.

And the curtain, if it was ever closed at all, is rising.