During an election year before I was eligible to vote, I saw a political cartoon that I’ve remembered ever since. The picture could summarize many elections, but I suppose I enjoyed it initially because the message was easy to understand.

The cartoon appeared at the time of a national nominating convention for one of the major parties. Their choice for presidential candidate was obvious before the convention. There are palm trees in various states, but I think the meeting was in Florida, which makes the message an especially appropriate contrast to the situation this year.

The cartoonist drew a man sitting under a palm tree. A basket also sat on the ground under the tree. A large coconut hung directly above the basket.

There was a sequel as the political convention concluded. Again the cartoon showed the man sitting under the palm tree. His basket also sat there on the ground. This time the big coconut was in the basket.

He waited. The results came in.

This year's election has been more exciting than that.

Even before I knew that the results this time wouldn't be available for days or longer, I felt more like an American because of the election events. I've always been an American, and I know the rest of the country is always out there somewhere, but this was more personal. I had just punched holes in a ballot, and people all over the country had done likewise. Those actions were represented by the colors on a map that fit within the borders of my viewing screen. We had different voting preferences, but we were all in the process together.

Not being a parent, I won't be telling my grandchildren how close the voting was, but, in a childlike way perhaps, I enjoy the sense of being part of something historic. In this case, it's without the tragic overtones of people's reports on what they were doing when they found out Pearl Harbor had been bombed or President Kennedy had been assassinated — events with yearly anniversaries not long after Election Day.

A family letter that arrived a few days after this election commented, "Maybe we should be renamed the United States of Division. We are certainly divided on the proper person to be president."

Lopsided victories can show widespread agreement. They can also be boring. Sports fans like to see their teams win, but usually the games that receive the most attention are ones in which the outcome is uncertain until the very end. I think it adds interest to the whole political process when a national election is closely contested.

I suppose this is too close for comfort, but if repetition is the mother of learning, there must be lessons we can learn from counting and recounting. We'll have to figure out what they are, and there will be different ideas on that. We probably have changes to make.

Some would say that exciting and interesting aren't the right descriptive words for this election. The extended period of waiting for results reminded me of a play title in a modern drama course.  "Waiting for Godot" was classified as an example of theatre of the absurd.

Whatever our feelings, we wait for the results, and we're not used to that. We’re an increasingly impatient society. With fast food and fast cars and fast communication, we want results without waiting.

Not that long ago, our chicken dinners started with catching the chicken. Now we pace the floor while we wait for a microwave oven to count down a few minutes of cooking a frozen entree. Cars that take a while to pick up speed after leaving a stoplight aren’t fast enough for us. At work, I have my computer set to receive messages every minute, and I admit that once in a while I check before a minute is up.

Not all of life is high-speed technology, however. Waiting is an essential part of living.

Job in ancient days knew that. More than most of us, he experienced what it's like to succeed and to lose. "All the days of my struggle, I will wait," he said.

Growing takes time, learning takes time, healing takes time, social change takes time, political adjustments take time.

I think it won’t hurt us to practice waiting.

For most of us, life on the day we find out who won the presidential election won't be too much different from how it was the day before we voted. If it happens that we're living in a different place, driving a different vehicle or working at a new job by the time we know who's going to move into White House, the changes in our personal life since Nov. 7 will most likely be unrelated to the election.

Who the next president will be is not something I need to know right away. I'll wait and see.