Wait for it. Wait for it. Nothing to wait for.  It’s always been here.

As a writer, I make things up and then put them out into the world, and wait for a response. It’s the time when all possibilities are in play and anything is possible. It’s like day one of the baseball season, and making it to the World Series is both imaginable and conceivable. It’s the moment when the greater my imagination, the greater the response I’m sure to receive. It’s not the birth of my delusion. That moment often arises with the germ of an idea, the first beating heart of gestation. And at that initial emergence, I feel certain this is the one that will change everything.

OK, I realize I have lived much of my life waiting for things to be different. Suddenly, at my age, that’s shocking. What have I missed after filling my life with this continual state of delusion?

Many years ago, I gave my wife a copy of an article I had just completed and asked her to read it. She was a bit surprised, since over the five or so years we had been together at the time, I had rarely asked for comment. This was mainly because, when I did, my push back on that criticism, I admit, was not of the gentle accepting, “Oh, I see your point,” variety. It invariably caused me to stomp out of the room, completely flustered at not being understood by her. I had decided it was far better for our relationship for me simply not to ask. But this piece was different. I thought I had really nailed it. She took the new piece from me, smiled gently and asked: “Do you want criticism or do you just want me to tell you I love you.”

In her infinite wisdom, she knew what I and most writers really want.  I smiled and with equal gentleness said, “First, tell me you love me and then you can give me criticism.”  Is it really all about “I love you?” At its heart, the anticipated delusion undoubtedly begins with that.

This essay, however, is not wholly about the depth of my wife’s perception and how much she loves me, but rather the shallowness of my delusional obsession that envisions that fame and great wealth are worth having, and my continual impatience with not having them, now.

Let me be clear, I have been on the verge so many times and for so many years, my wife just laughs when the fantasy re-emerges with each new literary adventure. It could happen. No one has ever denied that as a possibility. But as the lottery goes, this is at best a two-dollar winner that barely pays for the ticket, and definitely not the yacht. Not that I even want a yacht, but it does imply a level of luxury, mooring and maintenance payments aside.

As a Buddhist, one would think I would have gotten the renunciation message, the not grasping at such meaningless and hollow accomplishments. But ego is a very strict master, and it is difficult to ignore the saying tacked to the wall of my office: Ego, Ergo, I go. It was meant as a joke, of course, a reminder, but it fools no one.

It’s not that I have been unsuccessful with my writing, but there’s a distinct difference between number of books published and number of books sold. And selling a book to a publisher has never quieted the delusion of anticipation that comes between the time that project was sold and the time it finally hits the market, or even the first year a product is on the market, or its first good review, or the day it goes out for its first Hollywood pitch. Delusional anticipation is the hallmark of a writer on the verge, or is it more apt to call it “the edge”?

Of course, the issue isn’t only the delusion, it is the anticipation. This condition doesn’t just get played out with writing. We inherited a painting that turned out to be from the Ming Dynasty. Initial appraisals of its value were beyond imagination. And then our art broker found a buyer. For two years, the delusion festered while the deal was always going down “next week.” Then an exciting change happened and the papers were supposed to be signed tomorrow. Weeks of tomorrows passed, until hours before the final papers were actually set to be signed, word arrived in the middle of the night. The buyer had been in a tragic car accident and had been placed in a coma. We anxiously waited for 30 days, doing our best to be respectful and compassionate of the buyer’s suffering, until he finally died, as did the deal with him.  The second potential buyer our broker identified was ultimately found to have committed fraud at the Chinese university he ran in San Francisco. He was rather unceremoniously shipped back to China in the middle of the night. The third, a Hollywood producer, simply dissolved into the Los Angeles, haze. The signs were so clear, even I knew it was time to take the painting off the market.

I concede, I spent those seven figures we were supposed to receive a dozen different ways. I checked my bank account daily to see if the transfer had taken place. All that was accomplished was an anticipation that bordered on lunacy. It wasn’t like the painting didn’t exist. Of course it did. Unfortunately, the delusion of the deal did, too. It was so certain. But certainty being what it is, nothing ever reached our bank account. When I finally accepted there would be no deal, and the mirage of hope and belief had evaporated back to the hell realm from which it sprang, there was no lesson learned. No declaration that the anticipation had created a level of madness I didn’t have to experience again. The next book was already being prepared for publication. Maybe this would be the one.

During this waiting period, my kidneys failed, and I learned the distinction between chronic and acute. Fortunately, acute could be treated and my kidneys were miraculously restored to fifty percent of their former selves. I then decided to reach out to a particularly litigious friend of mine, thinking there must be a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the drug the experts pointed to as the cause of my kidney’s near demise. I was right. Within days, I was filling out forms and avadavats and soon found myself as a poster boy for this legal action. I was to be the first case following the bellweather cases that had prompted the law firm’s initial suit. Those first cases were supposed to go to trial within four months of my joining the suit. Suddenly, the delusion descended, again. Because of the severity of what I had gone through, my imagination immediately projected that the settlement had to set me for life. The anticipation warlords had new fuel.

I had also come to believe that this current series of events was a recurrence of a family script. Many years earlier, my father, after years of money struggles, suddenly started taking cruises to Europe and even buying a new car. At first, we were all worried he was madly spending money he simply did not have. That was not the case. Against his initial wishes, an eager administrator at the Veterans Administration had applied for compensation he felt my father was due for physical disabilities my dad had suffered during World War II. The administrator knew what he was doing and his actions resulted in a huge retroactive payout for my father, along with a generous monthly stipend for his physical impairments.

With his experience in mind, and my ever-eager expectation ever-present, I, of course, created a similar fantastical scenario for me and my lawsuit. Five years later, after signing on with the lawyers, I received a letter from them saying a settlement was in-reach with the drug company. The delusion and expectation soared, once more, until I eventually found out that I was no longer a lead case in the suit, but as would soon be revealed, part of a much larger mass torte action.

This revelation did nothing to dissolve my expectation.  Two years after that, I received the actual settlement figures and learned the inequities of a mass torte. I was to receive a small fraction of what I had imagined. Needless to say, I had hoodwinked myself again. When I told this story to my oldest and dearest friend since age two, who had, in the ensuing years, become a renowned and well-respected psychologist, who knew better than most my penitent for delusion, said in his characteristically compassionate yet chiding style, “Well, I guess your ship hasn’t come in.”

When he said that, my mind stopped. I realized in full clarity that, no, on the contrary, my ship had come in, and it had done so close to fifty years before when the woman who would eventually become my wife, picked me up hitchhiking. My ship had indeed come in and had provided me with a life filled with conversations with some of the most accomplished and successful people walking on the earth. I had travelled the world interacting with people who were doing great and good work. My wife and I had raised two bright and loving daughters. That ship had docked years ago and continued to unload its bounty. Why on earth would I want another now, a different life?

Fortunately, as might be imagined, this realization shattered my longing to live that different life. By being constantly deluged by the anticipation of something better, I nearly missed the extraordinary life I had gotten to live. Whatever else had I missed while being fogged by the haze of this non-existent reality, and which cause such suffering,  no longer mattered.

The Buddhists tell us this is a precious life. That direct perception of things as they truly are gives us the opportunity to live without delusion, without anticipation that the next new now will make everything better. Everything is already as it is.

The comedian Steven Wright perhaps summarized it best when he said, “I don’t want everything. Where would I put it.” It’s how I plan to live the rest of my life. Unless, of course, this next book…