The Hidden Meanings Of Lateness
Tardiness can be exasperating. Nothing more annoying than meeting someone at a certain time and then watching the minutes go by without that person showing up. Some do not even arrive in the next few minutes, but may take hours or never arrive. The worst thing is that they are almost always repeat offenders: they never get anywhere on time.
If it is already the hour of the meeting and they have not arrived, you call them and they say “I’m on my way”. The most daring indicate “I’m already leaving”, when they should have already arrived. His tardiness is chronic. There is no human power to make them act otherwise.
The truth is that time is a completely subjective category. Humans have invented various ways to measure it. Even so, each one perceives it and manages it according to a series of subjective variables. For some it is an exact measure that must be adjusted; for others it is an annoying limit that does not tell them anything; and for everyone it is also a measure of their emotional pulse.
Tardiness and internal time
Each one perceives time in a different way. This depends primarily on age. When you are little, the hours seem like days and the days weeks. Hence, children get impatient easily. The older you are, the faster the clock ticks seems to you. You don’t know what time the day or the month ended: you just feel like it was too fast.
The measurement of time also depends on the amount of activities you do. If there are many, time seems to run faster. If they are few, your perception will be slower. Obviously, another factor that influences is your mood. The happy moments pass quickly, while in the stages of suffering or problems it is as if the hours stopped.
In any case, the human being establishes a link between his perception of time and punctuality or unpunctuality. If the circumstances converge so that you understand that time is a very limited and valuable resource, surely you will try to be very precise with the schedules. On the other hand, if your evaluation of the time is not so high, you will see a limitation in the exact hours. Some overestimate time and others pay more attention to the activity itself, regardless of the time it takes.
This way of perceiving time, slow or fast, affects how events are planned. Many unpunctuals are actually bad planners. They don’t want to snub anyone. They just don’t calculate well. They are easily distracted and are not assailed by that sense of urgency that does invade others. In this case, the lateness only reflects absent-mindedness and lack of maturity.
Hidden meanings in unpunctuality
Some chronically unpunctuals do not belong to that innocent category of the clueless. His lack of adjustment to social time entails other peculiarities. Chronic tardiness sometimes implies that behind it there is an excessively narcissistic personality. They are people who want to put the other in a condition of need, lack or vulnerability. Ultimately, they use their lateness as a mechanism of power.
There is also the case of people who are late everywhere because they have great insecurity. Somehow they fear the situation of the meeting and for that reason they try to postpone it as long as possible. They do it unconsciously, it is not that they intend to. They simply do not take the necessary measures to be punctual and do not know why. Deep down, they fear being rejected or belittled.
In the same way, there are those who use lateness to express a rebellion not prosecuted. They resist the situation that gives rise to the encounter. Their late arrivals are a way of making that rejection visible, but at the same time a way of posing a challenge. Perhaps there is something that is not in place and lateness becomes a vehicle to make it visible.
The common thing in all cases of lateness is that there is an ambivalence. In those cases, there are two realities at stake. The explicit, which sets a time, and the surreptitious, which sabotages that agreement. Behind the chronic lack of punctuality there is always a hidden message that must be unraveled. It is not the bad traffic, nor the simple carelessness that gives rise to this inconsiderate habit. Treasuring the habit of not arriving at the agreed time is in many cases a disguised and annoying way of transmitting a message.
Images courtesy of Pascal Campion, Rob Gonsalves
