How to change your relationship to waiting
Rethinking time through craftsmanship
Dear Rethinkers,
How do you experience waiting?
As a pause?
As an annoyance?
As an obstacle or opportunity?
Waiting shapes so many different parts of our lives, yet too often in our high-speed world we try to fill in the silences, pauses and gaps it creates. We check our phones while waiting in line, get annoyed in traffic, or stare at three dots wondering how long it will take to get a reply.
All forms of waiting carry a mix of suspension, self-discipline and helplessness. What we tend to resist about waiting is that we’re typically not in control when we have to wait for someone or something.
My fellow Brits have an interesting relationship to waiting. Take the queue barrier—often just as simple as retractable tape—which physically organises human waiting, making it visible and orderly. There we stand, like penguins, tut-tutting anyone who tries to jump the line.
But what if waiting wasn’t perceived as a mundane or frustrating waste of time, but a work of art?
