"I just got back from my first time at Burning Man, that wild experiment where tens of thousands of people gather in an inhospitable desert for art, music, and the roll of the dice that is humanity. I expected nudity. I expected alcohol. I expected dazzling art and limited sleep. But here's what I wasn't prepared for: the waiting. And yet, it was in that waiting that I found some wisdom worth bringing back, both for my own life and for anyone navigating life's pauses."
"Even if we set aside the airports and buses to get there, once on the Playa, I waited four hours to get our car out, while others waited up to 20 hours to get in. Workshops often started on "Playa time" (i.e., late). There were long lines for food, ice, and drinks. We gathered for hours to watch the Man burn, and on more than one night, we hunkered down through dust storms."
"At Burning Man, though, waiting has a counterpoint: immediacy, one of the community's 10 principles. It's an invitation not to get lost in the past or the future, but to be open to what each moment offers. That might mean stumbling on a lemonade station, accepting a pickle from a stranger, or stepping into a tango workshop just because you walked by. And yes, it also means practicing immediacy when we're fed up about standing in line."
A first-time visitor to Burning Man encountered extensive waiting: four hours to get a car out, others waited up to twenty hours to enter, workshops often started late, and there were long lines for food, ice, and drinks. The event combined waiting with a principle of immediacy, which invites openness to present moments and spontaneous participation, like accepting a pickle or joining a tango workshop. Waiting provoked frustration due to negativity bias, which narrows attention to what is missing. Waiting appears in many life contexts: doctors' offices, traffic, test results, messages, job news, relationships, and housing. The narrator felt waiting acutely in the search for a life partner at age 39.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]