The Act of Waiting

In a society obsessed with speed and efficiency, there are not so many situations where a body accepts waiting. Most of the times, when waiting is necessary, waiting spaces try to provide the mini-mum comfort for a body to cope with the context: seats, magazines and smart phones provide the mind the mental escape the body needs to stay uncomplainingly inactive while maintaining a distance from the other waiting bodies.In fact, if the space allocated for waiting doesn’t show the specific characteristics of a waiting area — queuing lines poles, peripheral chairs and benches, red digital numbers and their stressful call — the act of waiting becomes less acceptable: the minds seem to be programmed to react to signals they can clearly identify in order to accept a given situation. Logically, the occupied time feels shorter than the unoccupied time or in other terms, time is running faster when it’s not dedicated to waiting. And the number of distractions needed to occupy the minds keeps diversifying: we are seeing now-adays the multiplication of visual displays in waiting places being oc-cupied by moving advertisements aiming to replace boredom with consumerist desires.