Below is my short piece published in Monocle, “The Waiting Game.”
Since the invention of the atomic clock in 1949, time has been synchronised to the nanosecond across the globe. In the age of smartphones, access to your time is now at the behest of your employer, friends and the media. This shift has ushered in a new era of minutely regulated schedules and heightened expectations for timeliness, productivity and instant communication. Now our greatest fantasy is to eliminate waiting altogether. One glaring obstacle remains: the queue.
When we queue, it feels as though we are lending control of our time to another entity; waiting becomes an act of submission. Contrasted by the instant gratification offered by modern technologies, this submission feels like a waste of our most precious resource. Our schedules are crammed with plans and we react with hostility to anything that threatens them. The queue becomes the enemy and we either protest or unlock our phones to continue using our time in a manner that we believe is more productive.
It is easy to think that nothing is gained by waiting and sometimes that is true. But it is more than an obstruction in the way of our desires; it is a space that invites our imaginations to come alive. To wait is to charge the longed-for object with value. An eagerly anticipated letter from a lover is not the same as an instant message, even if the contents of the messages are identical. The food or drink made for you as you inch closer in a queue wouldn’t taste the same if it had just appeared before your eyes.
Think of waiting not as an obstacle but as an ingredient to cultivate. Tended to poorly, with bad queues or a lack of patience, it will sour everything. But observed well, it can make every moment of our lives taste sweeter.
Jason Farman is the author of ‘Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World’. This piece features in Monocle’s May issue, which is out this week, and is part of our series on the merits, business and even politics of queuing.
