Waiting is a Revelation

Expectare. To await. The posture of a mind still capable of being surprised.

We have discussed before how the machine servants catch you before you fall, answer before you wonder. This piece explains why that is a problem better than I could. The elimination of waiting and friction is not convenience — it is amputation. You are cutting off the limb that reaches toward meaning.

Consider: every dopamine slot machine in your pocket exists to murder waiting. To fill every gap with content. To ensure you never sit with an unanswered question long enough for it to change you.

Sacasas calls this "the loss of the interval." We call it brainrot.

Read slowly. Read twice. Sit with what confuses you. Here's one excerpt - read the rest.

"I would only add that such tarrying and waiting, which discloses the depths of the work of art to our consciousness, is just as effective in the realm of our ordinary experience as it is in the presence of the work of art. To tarry or to linger at the table, the park bench, the shore, or even busy city street is to invite the things of our common world to make their appearance. It is to learn to see independently of our desire to do as we ought. It is to unlearn the impatience born of the desire to master, predict, and control the world that is first and always a gift.