In defence of waiting – The Hindu

It is a familiar sight in India: serpentine queues outside temples, patients waiting patiently in crowded hospitals, or students refreshing websites for examination results. These intervals, though woven into our daily lives, are usually dismissed as irritants. In a society that increasingly prizes speed, waiting is treated as inefficiency, almost as failure. Delivery apps measure themselves in minutes, trains boast reduced travel times, and conversations collapse on instant replies. Yet the neglected intervals of waiting may hold lessons that speed cannot offer. Far from being wasted time, waiting is the architecture through which endurance, reflection, and patience quietly take shape.

Modern technology has worked tirelessly to erase waiting. A film that once required a trip to the cinema is now streamed in seconds. A letter that once travelled across oceans is replaced by the instant message. While these advances undoubtedly ease life, they also erode our tolerance for pause. The smallest delay is now felt as inconvenience. In making efficiency absolute, we risk forgetting that time not filled with activity is not necessarily empty.

Building expectation

Psychology shows how perception of waiting is rarely objective. A five-minute delay at a traffic signal may feel intolerable because of impatience, whereas a six-month anticipation of meeting a loved one may be endured with surprising ease. Waiting then is never just about clock time. It is about how human expectation shapes experience. In some contexts, it breeds frustration; in others, it deepens awareness. The interval, whether dreaded or cherished, is active not, passive.

History and literature offer countless illustrations. Farmers have long known that the harvest ripens only in its own season, and impatience cannot hasten it. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot made delay itself the stage, reflecting the human struggle with meaning in suspended time. Artists too speak of the “fallow period”, when inspiration is absent but imagination is silently ripening. Across fields, the wisdom is the same: waiting protects depth from the shallowness of haste.

Why then does waiting trouble us so much today? Partly because it challenges our illusion of control.

We like to believe that time can be bent to our will, that everything is instantly accessible. Waiting unsettles this assumption by reminding us of the forces beyond our command. A train may not arrive on time, healing may follow its own rhythm, and relationships may unfold at their own pace. In acknowledging this, waiting becomes not defeat but recognition — life does not submit entirely to human schedule.

The value of waiting lies also in its ability to prepare us. The silence before the opening note of a concert, the hush in a courtroom before a verdict, the pause before a student’s examination result — these moments sharpen attention. They are not empty, they are charged. If such intervals were erased, the intensity of what follows would be diminished. Waiting is thus a silent collaborator, deepening the meaning of what it precedes.

There is, however, an important distinction. Waiting without hope can slide into despair, waiting without direction may become stagnation. The challenge lies in inhabiting waiting constructively. This means seeing it not as wasted time but as formative time — time in which patience is strengthened, clarity sharpened, or resilience tested. When children learn to wait for fruit to ripen, they are learning not deprivation but rhythm. When professionals pause before sending a hasty reply, they discover the wisdom of reflection over impulse.

In India, queues outside ration shops or hospitals are an enduring reality; it is tempting to regard waiting as burden to be endured. Yet if viewed differently, these pauses may be understood as training grounds for resilience. They remind us that not all progress lies in acceleration. Some of it lies in letting pauses do their quiet work — shaping character, deepening perception, and preparing us for what comes next.

To treat waiting as a corridor rather than a cage is to free it from resentment. Within its architecture lie arches of stillness and windows of reflection. These intervals do not merely interrupt life, they help give it shape. The paradox is simple waiting feels like absence only until we attend to it. Once noticed, it becomes presence of another kind — slower, quieter, but no less vital.

shreeadya765@gmail.com