WAITING

Each of us has that one person who makes time stop being merely time. With them, ordinary minutes transform into something sacred — a quiet ritual, a fragile bridge, a thin golden thread stretched between the grayness of everyday life and a brighter, warmer light.

Twice a week I come to this old stone archway in the heart of Tbilisi. I sit on the familiar bench, light a cigarette, and slowly exhale the smoke into the cool evening air. In these moments, I become a silent witness to the city’s quiet theater. Passersby move before me like frames from an old, slightly worn film: a young man hurrying somewhere with determined steps, an elderly woman walking unhurriedly with heavy bags, lovers holding hands, students laughing loudly into their phones. I notice small details — the color of a coat, the rhythm of someone’s gait, the way a mother adjusts her child’s scarf, the tired but gentle expression on a stranger’s face. All these fleeting human stories appear and dissolve in the dim yellow light of the streetlamps.

This is my in-between time. Sacred time of waiting.

Sometimes this person is late. Then the familiar restlessness rises inside me. I stand up, light another cigarette, and begin pacing back and forth near the archway. My footsteps echo softly under the old stone vault. The arch seems almost alive — it remembers my anticipation, the scent of tobacco, the quiet beating of my heart. In these moments of uncertainty, every sound feels sharper: the distant noise of cars, the rustle of leaves on the old tree, the occasional laughter from the street. I look at my watch, then at the arch again, trying to calm the growing wave of impatience with another deep drag of smoke.

But then, finally, this person appears.

And in that single instant, everything changes. The whole world seems to take a soft, almost imperceptible breath and becomes a little lighter, a little kinder. A smile blooms on my face without any effort. My heart makes that familiar, joyful flip, and for a few precious seconds, all the waiting, all the cigarettes, all the pacing suddenly feels worth it. There is something profoundly tender in the way this person steps out from the archway — with slightly tired eyes after a long lesson, carrying the quiet fatigue of the day — and looks at me as if this meeting was the brightest part of their evening too.

We so often chase the meaning of life in grand ambitions, distant travels, loud achievements. Yet sometimes it hides in the most unremarkable places. In the smoke of a cigarette under an old Tbilisi arch. In the patient’s rhythm of waiting. In the simple, recurring miracle of two souls finding each other twice a week among thousands of indifferent passersby.

This is one of the most delicate and honest philosophies of being human: we are not merely waiting for a person. We are waiting for the feeling that only they can awaken in us — that warm spaciousness inside the chest, that gentle certainty that everything is exactly as it should be, even when night has already settled over the city and a cool wind is blowing through the narrow streets.

And if there is someone worth waiting for by this archway, life carries a very specific, deeply personal, and incredibly beautiful meaning.

Victoria Akopova is a lecturer in English Literature based in Tbilisi, Georgia. Her work explores the intersection of language, emotion, and narrative perception, with particular attention to how everyday experiences are transformed through literary expression. She is interested in the subtle psychological dimensions of human interaction and the ways in which ordinary moments acquire meaning through attention, memory, and narrative framing. Her writing often blends observational detail with reflective insight, bridging literary analysis and lived experience.