Waiting | Teen Ink

Waiting

March 20, 2009
By ameefishee BRONZE, Reno, Nevada
ameefishee BRONZE, Reno, Nevada
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Waiting. I hate to wait. Call me impatient, anxious, hasty, demanding, or restless. But do I care? Not really, I’m too busy waiting for you to get to the point. Most of our lives humans stand around waiting. We wait in lines at post offices, we wait for things to come in the mail, we wait for events like Christmas or the next basketball game, we wait for the one idiotic slow person that’s walking at turtle’s pace right in front of us. For goodness sake! We even have a ROOM to wait within. On average people spend almost two weeks, three hundred and thirty six hours of their lives wasted on waiting for stoplights to change colors.

Waiting is a useless amount of wasted time. Time that could be easily spent doing other more valuable things. I could be at home, working on my four page essay, my Spanish grammar exercises, my concert piece I need to memorize, but no, I am stuck. Stuck in the boredom. Stuck in the empty space. Stuck with no where to go, until the wait is over.

Average Americans spends sixty two minutes a DAY waiting for various things. Not to mention in a typical human’s life of seventy years, three of those valuable years are spent on just waiting! That’s 4.3% of our lives just being blobs of nothing-ness doing exactly that. NOTHING.

Imagine our world… Now imagine our world without having to wait. No lines, no stoplights. Instant service, instant communication, instant everything. One big cup of instant coffee ready to go, go, go. We’d never get impatient or bored or frustrated. Heck, half the world would probably be happier with each other simply because we aren’t waiting on one another.

Sure, our society has taught us skills to be patient. We’ve been taught that we should be tolerant and controlled. That waiting for things is actually a virtue. But who are they to teach us? Society only knows the slow world. Society expects the patient world simply because they have not taken the time to live in the impatient world. They do not know what it’s like to free fall into a never stopping, fast paced life, where you don’t need a pause button on the remote.

If the globe never stops spinning, if the seconds keep passing, if life is moving along at lightening speed, who is to say it is not but rightful justice to bring ourselves to this speed and perhaps even beyond? We should grasp each moment, each little amounts of time we have to spend in our lives and savor it. We shouldn’t have to stop for nothing or anyone.

Although an un-waiting world may seem illogical and unattainable, it is a possibility for the future. If we all work towards the common goal of an intolerant nation towards waiting, then it can and will happen. Unless of course, you enjoy being that turtle, that person stuck in a Jell-O of molasses, just waiting and waiting and waiting, while the clock keeps ticking and life passes you on by.

The author's comments:
This piece is soley based upon irratation and the annoyances of life. I was told to take one thing that I HATE the most and turn it into an essay, finding a solution, and releasing my inner most feelings on the subject.

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This article has 1 comment.


sanra SILVER said...
on May. 1 2009 at 7:32 pm
sanra SILVER, Far Rockaway, New York
8 articles 7 photos 62 comments
you know i agree, sometimes, on various time i do feel like all of my life i've been waiting, different time, diferent reasons.waitin for school to start, weekends, summer, graduation... you it makes it feel like that's the only thing we are living for.