anticipating a big event in the future

anticipating a big event in the future is an interesting experience. think back to some significant event in your life that you looked forward to with great anticipation (or trepidation & anxiety, if you wish, the effect is the same). it could be your 40th birthday, your wedding day, a childs' birth, college graduation, a promotion, an operation or a bat mitzvah.

the perception of time is a funny thing. remember when you were a kid? remember how long summer vacation was? it lasted -forever-. or, remember how hard it was to have to wait an hour for something? it was torture, the hands on the clock took an eternity to move.

as we get older our "experience" with time and the way we view it and relate to it changes. for one thing, consider a day; a single, 24 hour day. to a new born, a day would seem infinitely long - afterall, one day would be DOUBLE their life so far. perceptually that's a huge block of time. but for me, that same 24 hour day flies by. in fact, many of them can fly by with barely a notice, each individual day barely registering. how can this be? well for one thing, to me, a day is just over .005% of my days - of which there've been nearly 19,000. what a difference! in absolute terms, a day is a day is a day, whether my day or the new born's day. but subjectively, that same day is -double- the number of days previously experienced for the new born and  for me, it's 1/19,000th of the days i've experienced.

so now we can see that the number of days (or any unit of time) that we've already experienced affects how we perceive future days.

let's go back to the original thought - the anticipation of an event in the future.

here's another factor that affects our perception of time until an event in the future. that factor is whether or not there's a -specific- date or a general date. a specific date example might be: getting married on July 10th of next year. a general date might be: as soon as the house sells. there's a big difference between the two. or an even less specific date: an event date based on something that's going to happen, but you don't have any idea when... it could be today, next thursday or 3 years, 2 months and 17 days from now.

for a specific date future event, there's a finite, known number of days between now and then. if it's 100 days from today then we know that each day is 1% of the total. we know that after today there'll be 99 days; after tomorrow, 98, etc. it doesn't make the future date feel like it gets here any sooner nor does it make each day feel any longer or shorter than any of the other days but we can concretely see that we are closer with every passing day.


i've been anticipating being with my B for almost seven years. let's ignore the first five or so (because she will) and say that i've only been anticipating it for 15 months. this wait is a wait for a non-date specific event to happen, sometime in the future. unlike waiting for "the house to sell", of which you can see specific things transpire that give a pretty good indication of how close that might be to happening: getting a contract, buyer gets approved, title work done, inspections done and finally a closing date. none of those things happening actually make the final future event into a known date (okay, maybe getting a closing date - but if you've ever bought a house, you know that date often doesn't mean a damn thing!); but they do give an indication of the dates' approach.

i've tried to find intermediate events that would signal the impending approach of a date when B and i would finally be together - her starting to tell me of her beginning preparations for leaving bf, or her talking to a lawyer or looking for an apartment, the start of visits, our anniversary, New Years', her anniversary, my birthday. she hasn't talked, ever, about any of her preparations or even thoughts of making "being together" happen. i've chosen dates because they seemed like reasonable dates for us to start. none of them have ever happened or given any concrete indication that the end date was indeed approaching.

if i'm waiting for Tuesday, i know that i only have to go to bed twice and wake up twice and tuesday will be here. but waiting "... until i'm ready and can do it..." is a completely different animal altogether.

because i have no idea of what the conditions need to be for that to happen, it's within the realm of possibility that that day could be today. or tomorrow. thursday. next thursday. my birthday. 146 days from now. next New Years. a year and twelve days from now. or perhaps april 14th, 2019.

upon awakening each and every day, the question arises anew for examination... when will it be? it -could- be today. or not. with no knowledge, every day is just as likely a candidate for being "the day" as any other. one thing for sure though - it's got to be a day closer, right? just by logic alone, doesn't it stand to reason that there's one less day between now and "the date"? it'd be nice to think so, but do we really know that for a fact? no, not really. "the date" could be sliding farther and farther into the future. who knows? since i have no indications of any sort, it could be getting closer, staying the same relative amount of time in the future or be slipping even farther and faster out into the future. after today passes, the date could in fact have been pushed 9 days further into the future. who knows?

so every morning there's some renewed hope that today is the day. it could be, after all, i just don't know. as the day wears on, the perception is that it's becoming less and less likely to happen today. and then finally she says "i have to go" - and then there's no doubt whatsoever that today ain't the day. and, because she didn't say anything about tomorrow, well, tomorrow's not looking so good either.

a week passes. a month. another month. a year. a few years. every day just as likely as any other day to be "the day". but they continue to pass, unused, a day at a time, with still no idea of whether the date is actually getting closer, or farther away, or if it's even being considered.

as if that wasn't good enough - she has no idea either. the only factual statements i've ever been able to get out of her are "not today", "not this weekend", "not for at least 60 days". only statements that rule out days, none that give any positive indication.

i'm pretty sure today isn't the day.

but, i'm hopeful about tomorrow.