There are queues that don't need a sign to be recognized: The coffee line in the morning, the bread line at noon, waiting for the elevator at the end of a long day. These are very short moments, but they are repeated until they become a "parallel time" that lives inside our day. In these small spaces, something big is revealed: Our relationship to time, to self, and to others. The shot is almost constant everywhere: phone in hand, eye looking and not looking, mind wandering between an illuminated screen and a silent interior.
Waiting used to be an open vacuum that put you face to face with yourself. Today the emptiness is scary, because we live in a culture of speed: Everything has to happen now, and every pause feels like a glitch in the system. So when reality forces us to pause for seconds or minutes, we get an uncomfortable feeling: That we are out of rhythm, or that we are "wasting time". This is where the phone steps in as a guardian of time. It not only fills the time, it gives us a sense of control: We read poems, open stories, swipe aimlessly. As if we can't stand a minute without excitement, we replace waiting with escaping.
But the queue is not just a place to escape; it can also be a place to think, and maybe that's why we turn to the phone: so we don't have to think. Waiting creates a small gap between tasks, and this gap can allow the mind to catch itself: What am I feeling? Why am I stressed? What is putting me off? What is bothering me? Sometimes an idea that has been hiding, a decision that has been postponed, or a simple reminder that re-prioritizes. So the phone becomes a dual tool: a means of communication on the surface, but in depth, it can act as a veil that prevents the appearance of heavy questions.
Small lines are also a delicate social space. You are standing with others you don't know, but you share a "suspended time". This time may produce subtle solidarity: A shared look when you're late, a smile at a funny situation, a short sentence to break the seriousness. At the same time, it can produce withdrawal: Headphones, a screen, avoidance of eye contact, as if being around people does not imply a desire to communicate. This is the paradox of the modern city: High human density, but low communication, and the protection of personal boundaries through distraction.
From a psychological point of view, waiting becomes a "sanctuary" because it is one of the few places where society allows you to stop without feeling guilty. No one accuses you of being lazy while waiting for coffee. So many people use these minutes as a short break from stress, but they don't know how to actually take a break, replacing rest with scrolling. This explains why a person may come out of a short line even more exhausted: They haven't relaxed, they've just changed the type of arousal. Waiting could have been an attention-restoring silence, but it became a miniature noise.
In the end, small queues are not a peripheral detail, but a mirror of a time that fears and needs emptiness. It is a daily test: Do we allow a moment to be a moment, or do we turn it into an object of consumption? When we take our eyes off the phone for a few seconds, we discover that a distracted mind is not always an issue, but rather the mind's way of catching itself. Perhaps this is where the value of waiting lies: It doesn't give us extra time, it gives us a rare opportunity to see how we live time in the first place.
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