“Control your mind or it will control you.” ~Buddha
Some mornings I wake up before dawn and lie down, listening for signs that the house is awake.
A cough down the hallway.
The sound of drawers opening.
Water running gently in the kitchen sink.
My mother is now ninety-seven years old, and before my feet touch the floor, some part of me is already listening for proof that the world hasn’t changed overnight.
When I hear movement, I exhale.
Only then can I reach for my phone.
I tell myself I’m just checking messages. But recently I’ve realized that I’m usually testing for something else entirely.
Relief.
An email from an editor. A response about work. A call. a chance Some signs that the future is still opening up rather than slowly shrinking.
Usually nothing.
or almost nothing.
Spam is a medical reminder. Offer a discount. Silence masquerading as activity.
One recent morning, I stood in the kitchen refreshing my inbox while my coffee wasn’t cold beside me. I checked several times before sunrise. I knew there was no reason to look any further. Still, my thumb automatically pulls down, as if to confirm if I repeat the motion enough times.
refresh
nothing
refresh
nothing
Outside, the world was completely normal. A neighbor walks a dog. Somewhere down the road a car door is closed. Light slowly entered the room.
But something inside me was tightening.
I was not good at waiting. Not a normal wait. Not lines or traffic or delayed appointments. I mean the deep kind – waiting that depends on forces you can’t control.
Waiting for medical test.
Waiting to see if your body gets worse or stable.
Waiting beside old age.
Waiting for the phone to ring.
Waiting for someone to respond with the same energy you brought to them.
Waiting to know if your work, your voice, even your presence still matters to the world
And underneath it all, the waiting we rarely acknowledge aloud:
Awaiting loss.
The strange thing about waiting is that on the outside nothing seems to be happening, yet on the inside it can consume an entire day.
The mind fills the silence with explanations.
Maybe they are not interested.
Maybe I have waited too much in my life.
Maybe the opportunities are gone now.
Maybe disappearing.
At some point, the waiting time stops.
It becomes about value.
What unsettles me the most is not the silence but how quickly I try to abandon the present. My mind races ahead, rehearsing futures that don’t exist yet. I imagine the sickness getting worse. Financial collapse. death Loneliness The silent emptiness that will one day fill this room.
I try to solve tomorrow before today comes.
Buddhism calls this suffering sorrow– The deep dissatisfaction of trying to maintain a life that is constantly changing. And below that lies suffering Tanha: Lust A desperate desire for certainty, resolution, permanence.
I can physically feel the cravings.
Chest tightness. In the restless freshness of email. Inability to settle into a single unfinished moment.
The Buddha describes five hindrances that cloud the mind, and while waiting, I want to meet them all.
Restlessness prompts me to check again.
Doubt whispers that my price depends on being asked.
Hatred makes me resent the silence.
Fear of damaged projects in the future that did not happen.
And fatigue quietly asks if any effort matters anymore.
None of this changes reality. It pulls me further away from the life unfolding directly in front of me.
One afternoon, after another spiral of checking messages and imagining the results, I finally put my phone down on the table and sat still.
Not peacefully.
Just yet.
First, I noticed the tinnitus.
I have a thin, constant ringing in my ears that I usually resist or try to ignore. But over time, through meditation and reading about nada yoga—the yoga practice of inner sound—I began to relate to it differently. Instead of just listening to irritation, I sometimes listen to continuity. An undercurrent of thought. A reminder that silence is never completely empty.
So I sat there and listened.
playing
my breath
A bird outside.
Mother’s faint voice is slowly coming from inside the room.
For a few moments, nothing was resolved.
The future remained uncertain. Do not answer emails. The body is unprotected. Losses are still inevitable. But anyway something has softened.
I realized how much of my suffering came not from waiting, but from not letting the moment remain unfinished.
I sought reassurance before I lived. Be sure before you believe. Guarantee before relaxing during the day.
But life is never guaranteed.
Participation only.
The Eightfold Path, I began to understand, was not about transcending ordinary life. It’s about learning how to be present within it.
Right mindfulness means noticing the fear rather than completely.
Right effort means coming back gently when the mind repeatedly rushes to disaster.
The correct approach means recognizing that instability is not a fault in the system. it is is system
I still struggle.
Some mornings I wake up expecting grief before something bad happens. Sometimes I still refresh my inbox every so often. Sometimes silence still feels personal. But now there are moments when I stop struggling with the unfinished nature of life.
Moments when I just listen.
Ringing in my ears. To my own breath. The sound of my mother still alive in the next room.
And slowly the wait becomes different.
Not punishment.
Not paralysis.
practice
A habit of being present when the mind definitely wants to escape.
An exercise in realizing that value cannot depend entirely on feedback, recognition or future guarantees.
A practice of being here for the fragile life that is already happening.
Happiness still comes and goes for me. But calmness asks less.
It doesn’t need an answer. It does not need to be permanent. No need to end the wait either.
Just focus.
just presence
Just wanting to stay inside this moment before rushing off to the next.
So these days, when I find myself reaching out again—for reassurance, for solutions, for proof that everything will be okay—I try to pause.
i hear
playing breath The small sounds of life continue around me.
And for a moment, the silence no longer feels empty.
It feels alive.
about Tony Collins
Edward “Tony” Collins, EDD, MFA, is a documentary filmmaker, author, educator, and disability advocate living with progressive vision loss from macular degeneration. Her work explores presence, care, resilience and the quiet power of small moments. He is currently completing books on creative scholarship and collaborative documentary filmmaking, and shares personal essays about substacks of meaning, hope, and disability. Connect: substack.com/@iefilm | iefilm.com
