In The Meantime

Alfred to me was notable in one particular way.  The waiting.  It had a devastating impact in some areas but here it had scary moments for sure, but apart from high winds at two particular times, it was the waiting I found hard.  One day we were all prepared to unpack all that had been packed up in readiness, only to experience the worst night of the event that night.
The event was bad enough, but it was the waiting I found hardest.
I thought of that because I looked up the meaning of the phrase “in the meantime” today.    The meaning I found was “IN THE MEANTIME is during the time before something happens.”  I found that Dictionary.com described what I was thinking about. “The phrase in the meantime goes back to as early as 1340 and is based on meantime (“an intervening time“), also first attested in the 1300s. The mean in meantime is “average,” from a French and Latin root for “middle,” making meantime literally a kind of “in-between time.”
What I have found and hear more and more people attesting to, meantimes seem to be getting shorter and shorter.  Never have I felt so acutely the sense of “what’s next” after an event.
In many ways that is by the by and simply an observation of the times in which I find myself.  In a very real way, it is the “meantime” I find hardest.  In the meantime I am most likely to goof off.
For some reason I thought of lions in Africa.  Hunger drives them to action.  When not hungry they rest and do what lions do.  Eventually though a feed becomes paramount.  All activities are necessary and good, but for a lion there is nothing like hunger to motivate.
It really is the same for me.  When I am not hungry (not talking in a physical sense) I cruise.  And the thing is I reckon it is similar for us as it is for lions.  Satisfied hunger satisfies only until the next bout of hunger.
I have found myself wishing that eating heaps set me up to not need to eat again for longer periods.  But alas before long I am hungry again.
To me hunger is good (not talking the body needing food).  Hunger motivates.  It is when hunger is sated I am most inclined to cruise into oblivion.
So for sure I do not enjoy adverse events but it is in those times I grow stronger.  “Meantimes” are preparation times.  I continually draw on a source that provides all I need when I need it.  As someone I know used to say, “I am satisfied with an unsatisfied satisfaction.”