Brain Food #772: Waiting with others for the same thing
"Why I attached myself to the queue"
Thoughts of the day
I have never been a fan of queues, but I have yet to come across a better alternative for when groups of people need to put themselves in order (though this does not happen in all cultures, and a short trip to Italy will confirm this).
In the UK, the queue traces its roots back to the industrial revolution, when traders moved from market stalls to shops, and shoppers had to wait outside to enter. But queues became more established during times of hardship, such as rationing during World War II. Still, they prevail.
Queues can be egalitarian, and even provide a sense of community. To queue essentially means to wait with others for the same thing and, more importantly, to wait your turn. It is an act of pragmatism and Stoicism - you cannot control how fast the queue will move, or how many people will want to do the same thing as you. However, the reward eventually does come to those who wait.
And, as the passage below from C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce shows, a queue can provide a little help in knowing where to go, for those who don’t:
“I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight. Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering. And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town. However far I went I found only dingy lodging houses, small tobacconists, hoardings from which posters hung in rags, windowless warehouses, goods stations without trains, and bookshops of the sort that sell The Works of Aristotle. I never met anyone. But for the little crowd at the bus stop, the whole town seemed to be empty. I think that was why I attached myself to the queue.”
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