Waiting For Godot and Old Bay Seasoning

I'm trying to remember how many times I read and studied the play in college.

I do remember that it was my most read and most studied bit of writing throughout those years. Samuel Beckett's enormously popular play that is about nothing and no one, is about the absurdity of waiting. Maybe. When asked about the play, Beckett always said he wrote down what he knew about it, so that if someone was looking for more from him, there was nothing more to share. 

It seems to me that more than anything it is a metaphor for the experience of life for many people, who wait and wait for something and then discover they've spent their whole life waiting for something that never comes. 

So it could be cautionary. Or it could simply be a mirror for the times in our existence when we are not busy and therefore are reflecting on life - the big picture.

I have no idea why Waiting for Godot came to mind today. I simply was thinking about church and the goings on there and the conversations that edge the worship space on Sunday mornings. And, of course, my preaching for the day. We encountered the story of Jesus and the disciples in the storm, and I've been thinking about how experiences like that are living parables, experiences that plant seeds in us that turn our worlds upside down. 

It's that turning the world upside down mindset that got me thinking about Waiting for Godot. I remember my love-hate relationship with the play in college. I also am thinking about how it, more than anything else I read in college (except maybe 1984), has stayed with me, somewhere at the edge of the back of my mind, all these years.

And Old Bay? A connection point. Someone in a group was talking about the phenomenon of eating blue crabs in Maryland and the nearly cultic attachment to Old Bay she observed. I popped up and reached into my pantry and pulled out my little yellow, blue, red, and white can. Not sure it's a cultic or slavish attachment, it's more iconic for those of us who know it. For those who don't, I'm not really sure what to say except, perhaps, how can you possibly have prepared (blue crabs and) steamed shrimp without it?

I'll wait.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.