Society
When Did Waiting Become So Difficult?
A few months ago, I caught myself becoming impatient over something that would have seemed ridiculous just a generation ago. I was waiting for a website to load. The page wasn’t frozen. My internet connection wasn’t broken. Nothing had gone wrong. The loading icon simply remained on the screen for a few extra seconds. Yet I felt annoyed. I remember staring at the screen, wondering why it was taking so long. Then another thought followed almost immediately. How long had I actually been waiting? Five seconds? Ten? Certainly not more than that. The strange thing wasn’t the delay. The strange thing was my reaction. Somewhere along the way, a few seconds had started to feel like a long time. That