Expectations fall short of reality when: Someone says they hate a movie/book/song that you love. You put a ton of effort into something that ends up flopping. You learn that you’re the last person to find out about a shocking family secret. Some of your foundational beliefs are challenged in a way you aren’t prepared for. You get caught doing

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Because, as Tom Waits so unforgettably observed, the way we do anything is the way we do everything, our style of waiting is a miniature of our style of living: There is impatient and petulant waiting; there is waiting with the humility that while we may be worthy of the object of our hope, we are not entitled to it or to the mercies of time; there... See more

I have no problem waiting five or ten minutes for menus, or even longer. I’m not desperate to eat, I’m desperate to be free of the existential limbo of not knowing whether we’ve been completely overlooked. Human needs are strange—I could fast for twelve hours with little discomfort, yet sometimes it’s amazingly difficult to bear a tiny uncertainty... See more