 |
| 'I don't care if we're eighty years early, we are getting those One Direction tickets!' |
There has been a vicious rumour circulating about us Brits
that needs correcting right now. No, I am not talking about the bad teeth,
bumbling speech or general propensity to be evil attributed to us by American TV.
Let’s get one thing straight: Britons do not like queuing.
No sane person likes queuing. Whether it’s in a shop, on the
road or at a theme park, queues, like rain and taxes, are perceived by Brits as
an inevitable part of life, but not as a joy. It is probably this acceptance
that makes others think we enjoy waiting in line. While people from other countries
might refuse to adhere to such a system, we are willing to go along with it, we’ll
just grumble and moan in the process.
If we're not careful, queues can becomes unpleasant reflections of one’s
life, as the unending state of limbo stretches into a metaphor for existence.
Neither in one place or the next, stuck waiting to fulfill our true purpose, we
watch the people around us also striving for the same goal, reaching it before
us or following in our footsteps, everyone silently agreeing to conform
to this system that takes a chunk of our life in exchange for achieving a particular end.
Once you have entered The Queue, your concept of time changes. Restricted by
your status as part of The Queue, you are no longer free to choose what to do
with your time. You forget what it was like to not be in this queue, and you suddenly
find yourself unable to imagine that a time exists beyond it, that one day you
will not be standing here, waiting for that person to count out every single
penny in circulation, or for the engineer to fix the rollercoaster. For the first
time, you are forced to obey Yoda and countless self-help gurus, and to live in
the moment. Unfortunately, the moment you are trapped in is one of frustration,
doubt and boredom.
The Queue also screws with your concept of space. You may well have
walked through or past the place where you are now queuing countless times,
unheeded by the system you have suddenly signed on to, able to stroll nonchalantly about in a wild and innocent fashion. You may even have skipped a little. Now, however, you are blocked in, unable to
move too far to either side for fear of losing your place and forfeiting your contract, while a few measly steps forward are now perceived as a victory. You look back wistfully on those blissful
times of meandering lazily along, unstructured and unbound, and wonder how you
could have taken that freedom to stride so boldly for granted.
At this point, you begin to make bargains. You will never
take your spare time for granted again. You will spend every minute doing
useful, important, adrenalin-pumping activities and carpeing the diem. You will learn a language, go skydiving, hug a
tree – all the things that you thought you would have time to do but never did,
because before The Queue there was always the future. You will never neglect the
freedom to move around at will again. You will roam freely about the earth,
noting every individual step as a sign that you have the agency to control your
own path, and the chance to follow it. Once The Queue has freed you, you will
grab life with both hands and never spend another minute in such a limp, helpless state.
And then the customer before you takes their bags, the car
ahead moves off, the theme park worker ushers you on to the rollercoaster, and
all those lessons, all those promises, vanish into thin air. You have made it.
You have completed your contract with the queue, sacrificed minutes or hours of
your life and promised to be there, in that place rather than anywhere else, and
you have been duly rewarded. Life goes on, The Queue is forgotten, and you forget what it was to be so restricted, and return to your routine.
No comments:
Post a Comment