In waiting one has to delay gratification( Wittmann, 2014, 3) and one focuses on the future in which the waited for will arrive while“ erasing” the past and“ diminishing” the present( Connor, 2012, 33). Even if one is doing something like listening to music, reading, walking up and down, those activities seem to lose importance. If someone asks What are you doing here? We would most likely reply I am waiting for so and so … instead of I am reading a book..
However, the activities that we engage in while waiting are a strategy to make the waiting more comfortable, to distract us from the actual wait or even to make us feel that we are not wasting our time.
What I realised when performing Esperando a Fabiola was that if at any point I focused on the present, on the moment, rather than on her arrival if I became distracted from that what I was waiting for then I was no longer waiting, the wait disappeared and with it the anxiety.