![]() ![]() You also have the 24-hour news networks, who have to fill space with news even when nothing new is happening. We fill the wait time with meaning when it's complex and we don't understand what's happening behind the scenes. I think that was part of why conspiracy theories emerged. That's what the election was like for most people. But if it takes longer or there's a lack of feedback, it’s like the buffering icon on your computer that just spins and you don't know when it's going to end. If can beat expectations, then people leave the experience feeling positive about it. It felt like we knew it would take a few days, but by the Friday after, we were getting really impatient to hear something. I’m also thinking of how we experienced waiting for the election results, and how our cultural expectations affected that. It’s not subjective hours and seconds that pass in a day. Our cultures have such an impact on how we perceive time as human beings. Culturally, there's these really stark contrasts with our willingness to wait, and how we prioritize self over communities at moments. ![]() you always have these viral videos on Black Friday of people stampeding through the entrances of Walmart. It's how they reiterated their connectedness: waiting together. GQ caught up with Farman for a conversation about why humans have such a difficult time with waiting, the perils of living in a society that can’t tolerate pauses, and what we can do-and learn from other cultures-to make seemingly interminable waits just a little bit more bearable.Ī colleague of mine who studies and works closely with communities in Uganda mentioned to me that people in the community she works with will sometimes gather at the bus stop to head into work about an hour before the bus ever shows up. A professor at Maryland University and the author of Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World, Farman has spent years studying our relationship to time, and how it has evolved throughout history and across societies. But what if it didn't have to be this bad? Waiting to see what life might look like on the other side of this. Or waiting for a vaccine, and for the pandemic to finally end. Now, these days, it can feel like all we’re doing is waiting: for the election to finally happen, then for election results. Or, more accurately, griping and grousing about how long we had to wait for the elevators, because waiting is something seemingly everyone finds annoying. Back before the pandemic, when the GQ staff all worked together in a skyscraper, a favorite in-office activity was discussing how long we had to wait for the building’s elevators. ![]()
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