Waiting for the Almond Trees
“When I lived in Algiers, I would wait patiently all winter because I knew that in the course of one night, one cold, pure February night, the almond trees of the Vallée des Consuls would be covered with white flowers.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE ALMOND TREES
In the middle of an essay about how to keep your nerve in a collapsing Europe, Camus stops to describe some trees. He waited all winter, he says, because he knew that on one cold night in February the almond trees would suddenly be in flower. Not gradually. In the course of a single night.
The detail he lingers on is the waiting. All winter, patiently, with nothing visible happening at all. Anyone who has grown anything knows that stretch. Nothing above the ground gives you the slightest reason to believe. The work continues on the strength of a prior knowledge that this is simply what these trees do.
Camus is careful to say a few lines later that this is not a symbol and will not win us our happiness. He is not offering a metaphor about how your troubles will eventually bloom. He is describing an actual practice. He waited because he had seen it before and knew the timetable.
That is the difference between hope and patience. Hope wants a good outcome. Patience knows roughly how long things take and does not panic during the empty part.
Find a stretch you are in where nothing seems to be happening. Ask how long this normally takes before deciding it has failed.
