Anticipa -- tion

As everyone gets in line to watch the last Harry Potter movie, The Deathly Hallows Part II, I have decided to stay away. It isn't that I don't enjoy the movies and the books -- I have and do enjoy both -- but I do not need to be first in line to watch the movie. It will still be there tomorrow and next week and likely next month. I'm all right with that. I may even wait until the DVD is available and avoid the crowds and hassles of trying to find a seat in a packed theater one or two months from now. With time comes patience -- or at least that is what I tell myself. I feel the same way about A Dance with Dragons.

Since I have yet to finish the first four books (I'm just about finished with A Clash of Kings), I'm in no hurry to read the latest George R. R. Martin has created. I have the book; it arrived on Tuesday, but I have other responsibilities and books ahead of that one, like two and a quarter books.

Maybe it is something that comes with time or age or just a sense of anticipation that needs to be nurtured and cultivated and enjoyed, but I'm in no hurry. There may not be a tomorrow and I weigh that against the possibility that I will die unfulfilled by seeing Harry Potter or reading Martin. Those two possibilities are equal with never having seen Lawrence Olivier do Hamlet and reading the latest Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners of the past twenty-five years and never having stepped onto a shuttle or the International Space Station, and I have yet to step foot on Mars. So many things to do and so little time and I spend it on the things I can do right now and am obligated to do. That is the cost of responsibility -- anticipa . . . tion. I hear Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N. Furter saying the word -- anticipa . . . tion and it sounds sexy and full of promise and possibility. That is what I leave for tomorrow -- possibility. After tomorrow there will be something else to anticipate -- if there is a tomorrow -- and the tomorrow after that, the tomorrow after that, and all the tomorrows to follow.

I can wait.