The Time We Spend Waiting: A Mesmerizing Photography Collection

Have you ever paid attention to how much time we spend waiting in our lives? We spend time waiting for all kinds of things every day, and it’s not just the obvious things like a doctor’s appointment or the bus. We also wait for web pages to load, for babies to be born, for spring, and then for summer. We wait to be served in restaurants, we wait for emails, we wait for a new career, and even children wait for skinned knees to heal. Some of us even wait for true love.

The question is, what is the amount of time we spend waiting throughout our lives? Depending on where you look online, you’ll get all kinds of different answers to that question. It’s no surprise really since it’s a hard number to calculate. What I have determined is the time we spend waiting takes up at least an hour a day (if not more). If you plan to live until you are 70-years-old, that would mean you spent 3 years of your life waiting.

If we live in a busy city, the amount of time we spend waiting will be much higher. I know I spend almost that much time every day just waiting in traffic. Another interesting stat is that we spend about 7 years of our lives lying awake in bed while trying to fall asleep. If we spend 7 years on insomnia and 3 years waiting – that’s a decade of our lives spent on some pretty boring stuff.

Steve McCurry, the famous American photojournalist, has an entire collection of photographs on his blog called the “Simple Act of Waiting.” I chose 10 of those photos to share with you here. They are fascinating and thought-provoking examples of people just waiting. The first photo below is probably the most mesmerizing of all. It shows millions of people standing in line waiting for a chance to bathe in the Ganges river. It was taken during the 2001 Kumbh Mela Festival (also known as the world’s largest act of faith). People believe if they bathe in that river, they will wash away their sins and be free. The ballerina waiting behind the stage brings back so many memories for me. I’ve waited behind a stage for my turn so many times (for different things), and I know exactly how she felt. I hope you like all of these photographs as much as I did.