“Let’s go.” “We can’t.” “Why not?” “We’re waiting for Godot.”
“Well? Shall we go?” “Yes, let’s go.”
[they do not move]
Welcome to the theater of the absurd! Where nothing much happens but ‘nothing’ happens – twice!
Nothing much happens in Samuel Beckett’s two act play Waiting for Godot, except ‘nothing’ happens, twice. First – nothing unfolds when waiting for meaning to arrive to jolt one out of the doldrums and into meaningful action and a second time when repetition of the inaction leads to the absurdity of more waiting for Godot. We are never told who or what Godot is, but that’s not really needed – we already know whatever it is we’re waiting for: Two homeless old men wait in a bare road with a single tree. They are in no particular time or place – nowhere and everywhere. Over two days they argue, get bored, clown around, repeat themselves, contemplate suicide, and wait – then argue and wait some more. They’re waiting for the one who will never come. They’re waiting for Godot.
It’s hard to admit but much humor- along with the usual servings of anxiety, despair, dread, existential angst and futility – is dished out when the human desire goes looking for meaning and purpose in a world that provides none. Of course, there’s the tragedy – we don’t have to look for it – nobody looks for it – we just find it eventually, like Old D.H. Lawrence – “Tragedy, ought to be a great kick at misery.” – but that’s when it turns humorous. It’s absurd. Marvelous – like life.
Albert Camus once famously wrote “We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it”. Amongst the multitude of symbolism and meaning that Godot inspires – from the mysterious and surreal to the mundane and everyday reflections of the human condition; conditions we haven’t overcome yet we know them better – the most significant act of refusal of contradiction is to find meaning in the act of waiting itself. Waiting, not as a stoic act of endurance but as a transformative process – its own reward: In the act of waiting, we become who we are. Waiting points to our desires and hopes for the future; and while that future may never arrive and our hopes may never be fulfilled, the act of reflecting on waiting teaches us about ourselves. The meaning of life isn’t deferred until that thing we hope for arrives; instead, in the moment of waiting, meaning is located in our ability to recognize the ways that such hopes define us.
“Waiting” – the ‘in-escape’ out, of wherever you are! As narrated more poetically by T.S. Elliot: “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; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting”.
Sometimes a plan is a list of things that never happen, then all that’s left to do is wait and turn waiting into an art. It is the only way forward. ‘Godot’ is whatever we are waiting for – it never does arrive but it is the waiting that makes Godot meaningful and turns it into art! It is absurd that it’s the aroma of Roasted coffee – more accurately a Cappuccino– that makes the Yabukita Godot recognizable. You will most definitely know it by its roast! If the aroma evades you, then you are bound to be greeted by the taste of a warm, slightly diluted Bailey’s Irish cream. Either way, one leads to the other and then back again. The taste of milk and a warm chocolate cake mixed with dark chocolate and Vanilla are all to be found in the waiting. The Woody, Summer edginess comes with the flavors of Plums and Brownies which become more apparent as the tea relinquishes temperature and the roast settles. Still Loud, Edgy, Racy, Intense and Passionate and still assuaging Ennui, if bearing a little more appreciation for the absurd, the Yabukita Godot comes bearing the perfect expressions for the kind of meaninglessness that reveals the profoundest of meanings.
“It’s all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary.” – Francis Bacon
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