08/24/2026
Everyone hates waiting.
Waiting for the package to arrive. For your ride to finally show up. For the first cool night after a summer’s worth of heat.
Most of us (ourselves included) are pretty well conditioned to hate waiting. Especially now, when almost everything is instantly available. In this very moment, there are large numbers of people staring at their phones and getting visibly irritated with loading screens and progress bars.
But there’s a good kind of waiting.
Those few minutes when you know something good is coming, but you don’t know exactly what yet. A server holding something delicious disappears around a corner. A glass lands on the table. From the kitchen: stainless tapping against cast iron, the hiss of seafood hitting hot steel and oil, the distant pop of a cork.
Something is happening. You’re just not part of it yet.
Maybe anticipation is half the pleasure of going out to eat.
