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 .