Be Still

On Expectations, Admiration, and the Distance That Preserves Wonder.

> "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing…"

> — T.S. Eliot, East Coker

It's an early Tuesday morning and I'm sitting on my bedroom floor with my back against the wall, staring at my table because I convinced myself to stay awake so I could tick off everything on my to–do list. There's a message I've typed and deleted three times now. It's to someone I admire, someone whose work and words have meant something to me for months. And I keep hovering over the send button, wondering if reaching out will ruin whatever this feeling is.

That's when the Eliot quote comes back to me, the one I read in microbiology class last semester and didn't fully understand at the time. ‘Wait without hope’. It sounded impossible then, almost cruel. But sitting here now, phone in hand, finger hovering, I think I'm finally starting to get it.

2025 has been a rollercoaster for me so far. The year hasn't ended yet, and who knows what chaos still lies in ambush? But let's be optimistic. Of all the things I've learned, one of the most profound has been about expectations and the delicate art of having people in our minds without crushing them under the weight of what we need them to be.

I've spent so much of my life building people up in my head. There was this girl in secondary school, brilliant and confident, who I desperately wanted to be friends with. I watched her from a distance, constructed an entire personality for her based on fragments, on the way she laughed in the hallway, on the books she carried. I convinced myself that if I could just get close to her, if she could just see me, everything would somehow click into place.

When we finally did become friends, when proximity replaced distance, something strange happened. She was still brilliant, still confident, but she was also insecure about her skin, petty about small things, sometimes unkind in ways that shocked me. Not because she was a bad person, but because I'd built a shrine to an idea of her that had nothing to do with who she actually was. And when the real version didn't match the version I'd invented, I felt betrayed. As if she'd broken a contract she never agreed to.

That's what expectations do. They're architecture we build in secret, invisible scaffolding we erect around people and possibilities, and then we stand back confused when the real thing doesn't fit inside the blueprint. I've done this more times than I care to admit. With friends, with family members, with people I've admired from afar. I carry these silent contracts into rooms where no one agreed to sign anything, watch things I value crumble not because they were weak, but because I kept insisting they be something other than what they were.

There's a lecturer I have this semester who I thought was extraordinary. The way he spoke about things outside of medicine, the way he connected morals and philosophical propoundings to the human anatomical make up, the way he made psychology feel alive and deeply fascinating. I used to stay after class just to hear him talk more. I'd volunteer to help with stuff, find excuses to visit during office hours. I wanted to know him, to learn from him, to somehow absorb whatever made him so captivating.

And then one day I saw him in the staff parking lot, yelling at a security guard over something trivial. The same voice that made medicine sound like sanctuary was now raised in anger over a parking space. And I stood there, frozen, watching my admiration crumble in real time. Not because he was wrong to be frustrated, not because being human disqualified him from being brilliant, but because I'd needed him to be more than human. I'd needed him to be the idea of him I'd constructed, and proximity had murdered that carefully maintained illusion.

This is what Eliot understood. Waiting without hope doesn't mean resignation. It means refusing to dress up your expectations in the language of certainty. It means admiring without annexing, appreciating without requiring that appreciation be returned in the exact currency you're offering.

I think about my relationship with my this older friend of mine. For years, I put her on a pedestal. She was everything I wasn't: organized, disciplined, sure of herself. I'd ask her for advice on everything, follow her recommendations like scripture, try to pattern my life after hers. And she was kind about it, patient, but I could sense something shifting. The more I leaned on her, the more I needed her to be my blueprint for existence, the more she pulled away.

It wasn't until last month, when we had an argument about something stupid, that she finally said it: "I can't be your measuring stick. I'm just trying to figure things out like everyone else, and you looking at me like I have all the answers makes me feel like I'm suffocating."

I was hurt at first. Defensive. But later, lying in bed replaying the conversation, I realized she was right. I'd loved her, yes, but I'd also needed her to be something she never claimed to be. My admiration had become a cage, and she was asking me to let her out of it.

See, I'd say this a million times over and over again: there's a specie of beauty that exists only in restraint, in the willingness to let things remain slightly out of reach. I'm learning this slowly. Learning that I can appreciate my lecturer's brilliance in the classroom without needing him to be brilliant everywhere. Learning that I can love my friend without needing her to be my personal guru. Learning that some people are meant to inspire you from a distance, and trying to collapse that distance doesn't bring you closer, it just destroys what made them inspiring in the first place.

I deleted the message. Not because I don't admire this person, but because I'm starting to understand that admiration doesn't always need to become acquaintance. That sometimes the most honest way to honor what moves you is to let it move you from afar. To hold it lightly. To stop trying to possess every beautiful thing you encounter.

We live in a culture that tells us hesitation is weakness and distance is a problem to be solved. That if you really want something, you should reach for it with both hands and refuse to let go. But I'm learning that sometimes the reaching ruins the thing you're reaching for. That sometimes proximity murders wonder. That some things are only beautiful when you're not trying to make them yours.

My grandmother used to have this saying: "Not every flower is meant to be picked." I never understood it until recently. I thought she was being poetic. But she was being practical. Some flowers are more beautiful in the garden than in your hand. Some things lose their magic the moment you try to possess them.

I think about all the friendships and relationships I've suffocated with expectations. All the people I've loved too hard, admired too intensely, needed too much from. The friend who stopped calling because I made every conversation about seeking validation. The mentor who started avoiding me because I couldn't just learn from them, I needed to become them. The relationships that died not from lack of care but from too much of the wrong kind of care.

It's 12:45 AM now and I'm now here on my bed. The message is still deleted. And instead of feeling like I've missed an opportunity, I feel something unexpected: relief. Because maybe this is what peace actually looks like. Not getting what you want, but loosening your grip on the story you've been telling about what you want.

I have learnt that admiration doesn't need to become proximity. That hope doesn't need to insist on a particular outcome. Maybe love, real love, means giving people space to be human, to be flawed, to be something other than the perfect version you've constructed in your mind.

So why not wait? Not because you've stopped caring, but because you've stopped confusing care with control. You let the mystery remain mysterious. You let people be unknowable in the ways they need to be. You hold your hopes lightly enough that when they shift shape or disappear entirely, you're not left holding the wreckage of something you built in your mind and called inevitable.

Because some things are only beautiful when you're not trying to possess them. Some people are only knowable when you stop insisting on knowing everything. Some distances are worth keeping, not because what's on the other side isn't valuable, but because the distance itself is what allows the value to exist at all.

And in that space, in that stillness, in that patient refusal to force things into the shapes you need them to take, you might find what you've been looking for all along. Not the thing you expected. Something better Something genuine.