Traversing the space between one location and another can be exciting, but it can also be agonizingly boring.

Much of the superficial excitement we get from such a journey is anticipatory rather than experiential: we’re looking forward to what’s coming, but not as keen about what we must go through to get there.

Waiting to arrive at our destination, then, is often difficult, regardless of whether we’re crossing literal, geographic distances or the liminal space between one way of living and another.

The perception of interstitial periods as things to be survived, though, rather than moments to be fully experienced, can be antagonistic to the full realization of the destination we hope to reach, whether that’s an adventure in an unfamiliar place, a change to our societal status quo, or an internal evolution of some kind.

The wait can, and at times should, be participatory.

We’re often best-served by engaging with that ephemeral moment no matter how mind-numbing, frustrating, and infuriating doing so can sometimes be.

The mundanity of waiting belies the intensity of frenzied change happening just beneath the surface and our ability to tap into that potential energy and influence its eventual resting state.

The tedium of intervalistic downtime can make stepping aside, disengaging, and waiting for everything to settle into a new, knowable default can be appealing.

But psychologically and behaviorally checking out can leave us without a firsthand understanding of that transition, which can make such shifts seem unrealistically destined, in retrospect, robbing the variables and individuals who contributed to that new reality of due credit.

Keeping our eyes open and minds active, even when we’d rather not—and even when we’re consciously and correctly stepping back from some aspects of our normal behavior—reminds us of our own capacity to instigate change, even (or perhaps especially) mid-evolution.

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