"Patience is not passive. On the contrary, it is active; It is concentrated strength."
-Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
I can't say I understand the Theory of Relativity the way, say, a physicist might. I've picked up bits and pieces from "Quantum Physics for Dummies"-type articles, and from movies. I don't have much of a scientific aptitude; the Astro Physics class I took in college was pretty much a disaster. But I understand the relativity of time well enough from a purely human perspective. The three days prior to my sixth birthday, for instance, stretched like an eternity. The three weeks before my final project was due in the aforementioned Astro Physics class flew by in the blink of an eye.
Yes, time has always been a funny thing, but never as much as the past two months, when very big things started happening very fast, until suddenly we found ourselves in a creeping limbo. Never, in my lifetime, has the question "How Much Longer" been more universal. We are all that five year old waiting for their party. Only now it's not the cake and games and presents that we're yearning for; it's simply our old lives. And the time stretching before us seems all the more interminable by the fact that no one can tell us exactly how much is left.
One thing I can say for certain is the time will come at which we have waited this thing out. That's not the challenge that faces us if we want to be stronger and richer, in the ways that really count, once we have. The challenge is to confront this interminable wait with true patience, active patience. We need to not just tolerate the wait, but find ways to make the wait more tolerable. We need to call on our strength and our spirit, so that we get through this crazy stretch of time not merely in a wake-me-when-it's-over way, but in a way that makes us more awake to our selves and our lives when it's over.