No News is ….

November 27, 2011

I know it’s the holidays and just after Thanksgiving and I just read a post on Yahoo.com about the benefits of gratitude, but really, I am not grateful for the idea that “no news is good news.”

Seriously, no news means that what is happening on the other end is a person taking the time to contemplate, to weigh the options, to be talked into the proposition, rather than embracing the situation wholeheartedly.

LIke the boy who tells you he will call you after your first date, then days go by. Was that ever good news?

Or after the job interview when you tell yourself, “They’re checking my references before offering me the job” and even you only half believe it.

Or when you send out your manuscript and wait and wait and wait.

Sure, sure, for the more prestigious magazines there are rounds and rounds of cuts. First you have to get past the slush pile reader. Then you have to get past the general committee reader, then you have to get past the committee of readers. I understand that. I get that. Still, no news means the piece has not been accepted for publication, so how can it be good news? Because they’re still deliberating? Because that boy might still call you five days later?

No news means you can continue to delude yourself into thinking that good news is on the way. But, isn’t it a delusion?

Then when you get the bad news, some kind soul, usually your mother, tells you “It’s for the best. Something better is on its way.”

WHEN?

I didn’t set up my high expectations (via the directions from The Secret) so I could wait and wait and wait while deluding myself with hope that somewhere in the future things will work out for the best.  I could be hit by a car tomorrow. I need something good to happen today!

Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

Well, it’s a miracle I haven’t self-imploded with all my no news and waiting.

My Buddhist friend reminds me that no news is no news.

Like that helped. Just what I needed, for someone to get all zen on me.

I’ll concede that no news is not bad news, and there is the potential for good news at a later date, but I happen to be soul mates with Veruca Salt, and I want it now!

I suppose that makes me a rotten egg.

So while I continue to have no news, I guess I’ll distract myself with other things to keep my mind off the no news thingy. what was that news I was waiting for???

This week I will remember that no news is no news, not bad news, not good news, just no news.