Waiting

Waiting. It is perhaps the only common thread among travels, the only “experience” you can count on happening. You wait to check-in, to pass the security checkpoint, to board, to fly, to land, to get through immigration, to pick up your luggage (that is hopefully all there, with no wheels on your suitcase missing)… and what about all the waiting that happens beforehand, prior to the day of departure? And then there is the waiting that can happen on a trip, which is made all the more excruciating because the last thing you want to do at your dream destination is to wait some more.

Waiting is a story that is never told. And why should it be? I certainly agree with de Botton in that if I was waiting to hear about someone’s journeys and travels, such endless, uninteresting detail would be “maddening.” I probably wouldn’t even let it get to the point of it being “maddening.” I can see myself interrupting the storyteller and saying something along the lines of, “Okay, we get it. You waited. Why are you telling us this? Get to the juicy stuff, please.”

But the thing is, I can always recall what it was like to wait. When certain memories have come to dominate my recollection of the trip, I still remember the hours spent waiting because there was always an emotion laced in. Whether it be anticipation, annoyance, dread, any sort of sentiment, really, that feeling molded the desires I held about my impending journey. And that is such an inescapable part of travel, to have expectations about the place and events to come. Perhaps it isn’t even something as strong as expectations about what’s next but a light picture you’ve drawn in your head, based on the scraps of information you know and the Google images you found online. Whatever it is, you arrive with your mind jumping to see if imagination has got it right.