Here I am, sitting in a hospital waiting room. [My husband is getting a routine procedure.] At first I could work on my computer for my online classes, check out an old issue of Consumer Reports, and had just started to read O’Donohue’s The Elements. And then it all went very bad…

Code Red? Waiting patient lost it? Out of tea? No–worse even than the last one, although that would have been pretty serious.

No–someone insisted upon turning on the TV. Now it is impossible to think as the talking heads drone on and on and on about nothing at all. Silence–that which allows us to be reflective human beings is gone.

Why does one person get to make a decision that affects the rest of us poor captives people? Enquiring minds would like to know.  Why can we not simply wait in a waiting room, thinking, reading, even quietly speaking with one another?

And so I stand outside the waiting room in a semi-futile attempt to find my thoughts. Wish me luck.