Generally, nobody likes to wait. The simple sight of a queue very often makes us think about possible alternatives to balk it. On the one hand, if we have enough money, we can get what we are looking for just paying for it a little more. On the other hand, if we do not want to pay more, we can always try to buy it online, in the shop at certain hours that everybody knows people are not usually available to go, or simply neglect to acquire it. All depends on how much we need it and how much we appreciate its quality. Only quality makes the wait acceptable and the distribution of waiting time coincides with the distribution of power; power to balk the queue, power to make others wait. According to Schwartz (1975), that is because we modern people live in a society in which time has become one of the most valued assets. We all are finite individuals with a limited time dwelling in a world where there are too many possibilities of being and doing. Thus, we measure, calculate, divide and manage our time in order to make it as profitable as possible. We are taught not to waste it and being on waiting seems to be one of the ways par excellence of doing so. Therefor the act of waiting is learned as an experience that should be avoided.

However, although our society defends the uselessness of waiting, it transmits to us the importance of having expectations about the future. The act of expecting is a kind of wait, but one in which we can calculate when, where and how something is coming. That is why it is acceptable. When we expect, we do not just wait. On the contrary, we wait for something in particular, we await it. As Gasparini stated, the difference between wait and expect “is represented by the state of anticipation implied in the latter which, to a certain extent, gives an actor control over the situation” (Gasparini, 1995, 80). This distinction, usually forgotten in the common use of the language, makes an educational difference that we can already find in a classical modern pedagogue such as Herbart. This author affirms that

the expected is naturally not identical with that which aroused the expectation. The former, which perhaps can now for the first time put in an appearance, is in the future; the latter, on or from which the new can arise or date itself, is the present on which, in the case of interest, attention properly speaking fastens (Herbart, 1896, 131).

'That which aroused the expectation' referred by Herbart is a kind of wait that is not in the future because nobody knows what could happen. It is a wait settled in the present, totally open, thoroughly attentive to whatever the world may offer. There is no anticipation, but simply openness; there is no action, but pure passivity. Our risk society has rejected this kind of wait as positive, being more focused on teaching the new generations how to anticipate, calculate and manage their time in order to overcome the handicaps of an uncertain world that actually cannot be controlled at all (Gasparini, 2004). However, as this paper will try to show, this kind of waiting is educationally essential for everyone in order to grow up as a responsible human being (Weil, 1973; Blanchot, 1997; Lewin, 2014).

From a philosophical-educational perspective, and thus fundamentally by means of critical analysis of texts this paper will try firstly to establish a conceptual distinction between the act of waiting and the act of awaiting (or expecting) something in particular. Secondly, we will show up to what extent it is essential for the new generations to learn to simply wait beyond knowing the best ways of building and maintaining expectations about the future. In order to give a solid basis for the arguments offered, this analysis will be carried out in the light of some classical and current authors whose works can help us to fulfill the main objective of this paper.

As Geißler (2002, 136) states, “just as the stability of an ecological system is increased by having a growing number of different species existing in it, so also society increases its life chances and survival opportunities by having a growing abundance of forms of time”. Moreover, today we can only experience one kind of time, the chronological one, which must be extremely controlled in order to succeed in a society in which empty times are punished. Although we live in an unstable world, we are taught to foresee, anticipate and decide, so we cannot fail and, if we do so, it will be always our fault. We should have calculated better. Thus, we are supposedly free, but actually we are not. Our knowledge society, full of information, demands from us a permanent and restless attention, so that there is no real free time, our time has been colonized (Hauser, 2015) and this situation do not let us time to reflect by ourselves, to think independently of the inertia of the flow. If we want to be capable of that, we need to develop the ability of experiencing and bearing another kind of time; a time that cannot be calculated, divided or managed; a time that can be just lived and whose outcome, as this paper will show, is the development of the ability of really become free subjects, with a singular personality that enable us to truly decide by ourselves. That kind of time is the time of waiting with nothing to be awaited. This paper will conclude with a collection of strategies to promote this way of waiting among the new generations.

Blanchot, M. (1997). Awaiting Oblivion. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gasparini, G. (1995). On Waiting. Time & Society, 4(1), 29-45. Gasparini, G. (2004). Anticipation and the surprises of everyday life. Social Science Information, 43(3), 339, 348. Geißler, K. A. (2002). A culture of Temporal Diversity. Time & Society, 11(1), 131-140. Hauser, M. (2015). The Colonization and Decolonization of Time. Philosophy Study, 5(6), 287-291. Herbart, J. F. (1896). The Science of Education: Its General Principles Deduced from Its Aim. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Publishers. Lewin, D. (2014). Behold: Silence and Attention in Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48(3), 355-369. Schwartz, B. (1975). Queueing and Waiting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weil, S. (1973). Waiting for God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.