Schweizer turns an apparently insignificant experience — waiting — into an opportunity to reflect on what it really means to live in time. In a society that values speed, productivity, and immediate gratification, the author focuses on that seemingly “wasted” time during which we cannot make things happen whenever we want.
From a phenomenological perspective, drawing also on literature and art, he shows that waiting is not simply an absence of activity, but a particular way of experiencing duration: it can contain hope, desire, boredom, resignation, uncertainty, and even an unexpected opportunity for attentiveness.
The book’s most interesting contribution lies precisely in making us look differently at something we normally want to eliminate from our lives. It also succeeds in recovering the value of slowness and inner experience in the face of the contemporary obsession with immediacy. It examines waiting as “experienced time” rather than as a mere chronological quantity.
Its main limitation is that it does not offer a systematic theory of waiting. Instead, it proceeds through reflections, literary images, and examples, which may make it seem somewhat fragmentary to readers expecting a rigorous philosophical argument.
Even so, this is an original, sensitive, and intelligent essay that leaves us with an important question: what do we do with our lives when we can do nothing to speed up what we are waiting for?