While sorting through a pile of mail, I see a bill I should have paid online two weeks ago. Instinctively, I open the drawer and reach for my wallet.
It isn’t there.
I am not concerned. The wallet must be elsewhere in the house—probably in the jacket I wore to dinner the night before.
I search the jacket, the dirty jeans in the hamper—the butt area has some bird poop I sat on yesterday—and the entire closet.
The wallet isn’t there, either.
My hands scan the cracks along the fabric couch, where the TV remote always falls. I dig through a pile of clean laundry I started folding the night before. I return to the closet again. I check my credit card records and see no weird transactions.
Could the wallet be in the backpack I used on a hike yesterday morning? Unlikely, since I paid at the restaurant later in the evening. I look through the backpack nonetheless. Something square-ish is in one of the deep pockets. It turns out to be a folded brochure for “Mike’s free landscaping estimate!”
My heart sinks after looking at the same places three times.
The wallet is not at home.
Should I call the restaurant? It’s early, so they are not open yet. Could I have dropped the wallet between the mall and the parking lot? Possible, but that means the chance of recovering it would be slim. Does the mall have a lost-and-found?
I leave the house for a walk. My mind assesses the possible damage: My wallet has five payment cards, a driver’s license, a Clipper transit card, and at least $80 of cash. It also contains several membership cards—AAA, car insurance, health insurance, and Costco. Why haven’t I removed the cards that need not be there?
My head hurts thinking about the potential phone calls and trips to the DMV—are they still as inefficient as before? Also, what number should I call if the loss report numbers are printed on the cards themselves?
It hits me that there’s another possibility: I haven’t searched the car yet. Y has driven the car to an appointment. I text her to see if she can check the car for me. But she may not see the text message for a couple of hours.
So I wait. There’s nothing else I can do. The rest of my day will be ruined if the wallet isn’t in the car. But I don’t know yet.
I don’t think there’s an English term for this specific flavor of waiting; I will call it consequential waiting.
Consequential waiting is a state of vacuum: you are at a crossroads, awaiting an outcome with considerable repercussions. The result dictates the course of the future. Your path ahead is contingent on what fate or someone else decides. You are in limbo—nothing to do but to wonder what will happen. You can plan out scenarios and potential actions, but the outcome is too variable for the planning to be useful.
The absence of an answer gnaws your attention like a leech sucking blood out of you without letting go. There’s no peace until closure; you can’t exit the ambiguous, suspenseful situation. You have hope, yet the hope is dangerous since it can also crush you.
Many years ago, I was eager to leave my job for a new one. None of the dozen applications came back with any news. A friend of mine referred me to a position at his company, and with that introduction, I went through multiple rounds of interviews. The opportunity gave me hope, but the fact that it was my only promising lead bothered me. If that job didn’t materialize, I would have no clear prospect for at least a few months.
The wait for the callback was excruciating. I frequently checked my email for an update, but the company was silent for over two weeks. I debated whether to check in with the recruiter but didn’t want to sound desperate. I could prepare for more interviews or apply to other jobs, but I was unmotivated. It would have been easier if they had said no so I could move on. Instead, they left me hanging.
Consequential waiting is distinct from another flavor which I will symmetrically call inconsequential waiting. Inconsequential waiting is much more bearable: The wait is defined, the outcome is predictable, and you have a sense of control. It comes with little uncertainty. Most importantly, your life ahead is about the same regardless of the result.
An example of inconsequential waiting is the line at the grocery store. Even if the checkout line is ridiculously long, the wait is tolerable. You can observe the number of people and estimate the wait time. You will likely pay and be on your way home soon. If you want, you can remove yourself from the situation: abandon the cart, visit another store, or shop another time. It’s not a big deal one way or another.
As we age, the waiting we do is increasingly the consequential kind.
I head to the basketball court to clear my head. I normally leave my phone behind, but it’s in my pocket today. I plug the wireless headphones into my ears so I will immediately know when Y calls or responds.
It’s a beautiful day at the park—the sun is warm, the sky blue and cloudless. The ball makes a satisfying swish sound as it passes through the net. But I pay little attention. My mind is elsewhere.
Consequential waiting takes a mental toll on you. The brain hates the lack of clarity. But the harder you resist the uncertainty, the more it dominates the mind.
I check the phone again. My message still says delivered, not read. And only 15 minutes have passed?
Time crawls when you want a specific outcome.
I think of the people who are waiting right now. Someone is waiting to hear back from a school, a job, or a grant application. Someone is waiting to see if their visa is approved today so they can reunite with family after years. Someone is waiting for lab results to decide whether they need to start chemo. Someone is waiting outside the operating room to see if their loved one’s risky surgery is successful. Someone in a war zone is waiting to see if help is coming.
I suppose, in comparison, what I’m waiting for is far less critical.
Still, reframing the situation this way doesn’t offer much relief. My patience runs low. I send Y a follow-up text.
“Pls call me when you see this.”
I go home and take a shower. Ideas to distract myself are running out.
The phone finally rings. “What happened? Is everything okay?” Y says in a concerned voice.
I feel bad for startling her—she must not have seen my initial texts while at her appointment. My wallet is missing, I explain, and I hope she can check the car.
“Let’s see…” she says as I hear the sound of rustling. “Nothing at first glance.”
“How about the storage compartment or the area you charge the phone?” I ask.
Silence for a few seconds.
“Nothing there. And there’s no way it’s in the glove compartment…”
It looks like my fate is sealed. My mind goes to my next steps. What else should I have expected?
“Wait, there seems to be something… Give me a second,” Y utters.
I won’t get my hopes up. Fate has disappointed me before.
“I found it. It must have fallen through the crack. I had to move the car seat back to see it.”
A sense of relief floods me. It’s surreal that the outcome is in my favor.
Psychologists have a theory called loss aversion. The theory suggests that humans hate losses roughly twice as much as the equivalent gains. Said another way, losing a dollar gives us twice the pain as the pleasure of gaining a dollar. This theory explains how I feel: I am in the exact same spot as I started the day, yet I feel much happier, even though the loss has simply reversed itself.
But the outcome could have gone the other way.