Can't Hardly Wait

On giving up our idle moments

One of my son’s soccer teammates found himself the last one waiting to be picked up from afternoon practice. His dad was en route, but driving through a mobile dead-zone, so attempts to reach him went straight to voicemail. After waiting less than ten minutes, the kid called 911.

My kids don’t believe me when I tell them: My friends and I were stranded, dropped off too early, picked up too late—left waiting, all the time. Our parents often just forgot about us. We’d be sitting, in parking lots, on sidewalks and bus benches, locked out on porches, for hours. 

This was a normal thing. Ask anyone over forty.

We were bored, but soon we’d be playing with sticks, drawing in the dirt, snapping bottle caps, making up dumb songs, picking clover flowers and jade leaves. Often we just sat and watched clouds, squirrels, people, everything happening around us. If anyone had asked what we were doing, we would’ve said, “Nothing.”

Nobody gets stranded much these days. When plans change, or I get caught up in something and briefly forget I have children, our kids can text us, or just call 911. Somebody will come.

Whatever few moments they spend waiting, my kids do what we all do now, in the unexpected idle moment: turn to the phone to find something more interesting. Anything’s better than the dead air of just sitting there.

In exchange for having access to everything everywhere all at once, we’ve yielded our idle time. This might seem like an upgrade, like we’ve simply eliminated meaningless stretches of boredom. Instead, we’ve welcomed a thief into the house.

Filling every spare moment with the endless search for novelty, we’re cultivating a sense of deficiency—the sense that these simple, quieter moments of our life are not enough—perhaps even that they’re intolerable.

In a recent study, subjects were asked to sit alone in an empty lab room for 15 minutes and do nothing. The only thing they could do was push a button and shock themselves if they wanted to. 67% of men and 25% of women chose to zap themselves—preferring physical pain to doing nothing.

Last week, my son and I were in a waiting room for his orthodontist appointment, surrounded by a dozen other people, all parent-child pairs. Like every waiting room everywhere, every single person was bowed over their phone, transfixed. It feels dystopian, when you notice a moment like this, what’s become of us.

I decide that I’m going to simply wait in this waiting room. My son gets called in, and I stay behind and attempt this thing I haven’t done for so long: I just sit there, doing nothing.

For a moment, I feel a twinge of superiority over these people, who are basically me, thirty seconds ago.

Quickly though, surrounded by all the tapping and scrolling, I remember that I haven’t done the Wordle yet. Maybe I could just postpone this little experiment for five minutes. It feels physical, the pull of my phone in my pocket. Maybe there’s an email waiting for me, a WhatsApp, or a notification on Substack. Something exciting. Something more than this.

It’s like we need to turn every spare moment into a turducken. Sure, a roast turkey’s fine, but wouldn’t it be even better if we stuffed a duck, and then a chicken inside of it? No, it would not. 

I want less of wanting more all the time. Of course I’m not going to stop looking at my phone, but I’m trying to see where I can reclaim a few more idle moments. Waiting rooms, checkout lines, the first few moments after waking—these feel like good places to start.

Back in the orthodontist’s office, after five minutes or so, the urge to grab my phone starts to loosen its grip on me. I take a relaxed breath, leaning back into this enjoyable, expansive feeling. It starts to feel generous, giving myself a mini-break from the endless pursuit of something more than this.

It’s such a relief, even for just these few minutes. This, right here, is enough. It feels good, and familiar—like something that’s been right here all along, sitting quietly in the background, just waiting for me.

Many thanks to

Emma

and

Michelle Elisabeth Varghese

for the early read and helpful comments.

Thanks so much for reading.

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