It’s one thing to ponder what it is we’re waiting for. It is sometimes quite another thing to recognize what we’re waiting for when it arrives.
Before digital everything, when you could converse with a person and not know what they looked like, there was a TV/film motif where person A is waiting for person B, whom they’ve never met.
In the comedy version of the motif, B shows up, but A doesn’t know it’s B. A says something negative about B to B, unaware that is what they’re doing. What makes it funny (usually because it’s so awkward) is that both we and B know that A is talking to B about B.
In the tragic version, A and B fall in love via letters or over the phone and decide to meet in a public location. Each waits for each other and each thinks they’ve been stood up by the other because neither knows what the other one looks like.
Nearly everyone is waiting for something. How do we know when what we’ve been waiting for arrives? How do we recognize what we’re waiting for if we’re not sure exactly what it looks like, or if it turns out not to match our expectations?
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