Brain Food #801: Anticipation and being lost in translation
When it is fine to linger
Thoughts of the day
In Italy, I always get caught off guard when someone uses the word ‘anticipate’ in English, a direct translation of the similar Italian verb ‘anticipare.’ You will often hear this in a work context, when someone says ‘Let’s anticipate the meeting.’ How incredible can a meeting be, that it should require all of its attendees to sit and expect or imagine it?
Voltaire said, “We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”
Expectation and anticipation are distant cousins as words; they can sometimes mean the same, but more often than not, one is about hope, the other about the act of waiting. Both come from a place of optimism.
Research has repeatedly shown that the more we wait for an experience, the more enjoyable it becomes. This certain pleasure found in anticipation is perhaps due to the fact that our expectations are still alive in it. It is what we meet at the end of our expectations that can eventually disappoint us. Anticipation prolongs the waiting, and of being in the expectation of living, placing us somewhere between safety and the thrill of the unknown.
Voltaire’s words carry a double meaning: the expectation of living can be the act of anticipating, of waiting for life to start at some future event, but also of constantly imagining the life we can live, or could be living. This can be the danger of anticipation, that we look so much into the future, we forget to be in the present, in those in-between moments that make up the true currency of living.
‘Anticipare’ in Italian actually means to bring something forward, to get it done before the set time. Anticipating becomes an act lost somewhere between the present and an undefined future. In some cultures, it seems, it is not about prolonging the waiting time, but shortening it.
Anticipating, when done right, can be a different form of being in the present, of relishing the present moment and the promise of what the future might bring. It becomes a connector, allowing us to enjoy the present state while also imagining the future. Perhaps we prolong waiting for things because we enjoy the feeling of hope, or because the act of waiting can make the future more satisfying, although if you join an Italian queue once, you might change your mind.
In Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation, both characters are suspended in time, in a foreign country, but with little to look forward to. In the process, before they leave to unpause their lives and resume their responsibilities, they discover each other, and themselves.
It is easy to rush from place to place, without standing still, not just to appreciate progress, but also to really consider where we truly are. Sometimes, it is fine, even necessary, to linger.
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