As part of my mission to make allegorical journaling accessible to others, I am devising a range of supplementary resources to support self-reflection. As part of this, I am starting to create some pre-written pieces to be used as a self-reflection tool.
Unlike traditional journaling prompts, which start with a direct question about your own life, these guided reflections start somewhere else, in someone else’s story. You are invited to enter that world and notice your response. What feels familiar? What emotions are stirred within you? Does anything remind you of yourself or someone you know? Does anything make you feel uncomfortable?
There is no particular interpretation and the prompt is intentionally ambiguous. It is written as an extended metaphor that could be used as a mirror for your own life, a spotlight on the behaviour of those around you or a starting point from which to search for parallels in the outside world.
At the end, I have provided some optional follow-up questions to help you, but I would encourage you to spend some time reflecting on the story before looking at these. Your own questions, thoughts and insights will be far more powerful.
The Waiting Room
The aging man sits in the waiting room. He has convinced himself that he knows what he is waiting for, but if anyone asked him to put this into words, he would struggle to remember. The hopes and expectations he carried into the room are too distant to recall with any clarity now – all he remembers is that those feelings were powerful at the time, so it must have been important.
He tells himself he isn’t unhappy there, but his behaviour contradicts this assertion. His chair is imprinted with the shape of his body and yet he still fidgets. Sometimes he will drift off but still wakes up with a stiffness in his back. Despite the chair having adapted to his form, he is no more comfortable today than he was when he sat in the chair for the very first time. Over the years, irritation has shifted through to annoyance and then to quiet resentment.
He regularly complains about the waiting room. The coffee is too weak, the wallpaper too bold and the radio plays bad tunes from a time in his life that he would rather forget. The sunlight annoys him at a certain time of day when the sun lowers itself enough to peep beneath the curtain rail but is not yet low enough to be hidden behind the houses. That time of day annoys him anyway, he grumbles. It is too early to relax but too late to change anything.
He moans about how long he has been waiting, but when people suggest that he leaves, he gets irritated. Who are they to know what is best for him? If he leaves now, his name might be called just after he makes that decision, and that would be so annoying. He would have wasted all this time just to miss out by minutes.
The waiting is less of an activity and more of a personality trait these days.
He watches as other people come and go. He is torn between feeling pleased for them and feeling resentment that it is always someone else’s turn. When other people make the decision to leave the waiting room before their names are called, he silently judges them. He defines them as impatient, self-important or reckless.
He pushes away that nagging possibility that no-one will ever call his name. Surely life would not be that cruel. He reminds himself of clichés such as ‘all good things come to those who wait’, hoping that they are not sound bites that have been written for the gullible.
He wonders whether the door is locked, but never for long enough to try it.
Optional follow-up questions
You might not need to use these follow-up questions at all. Before reading them, spend a little time noticing what the story has raised for you. Your own insights are the most valuable place to begin,
What questions would you ask the man?
Where have you seen behaviour like this in the past?
What might be preventing the man from behaving differently?