The hidden meanings of tardiness

Lateness can be frustrating. Nothing more annoying than meeting someone at a certain time and then seeing minutes pass without that person showing up. Some do not even arrive in the next few minutes, but may even take hours or never arrive at all. The worst thing is that they are almost always repeat offenders: they never get anywhere on time.

If it is time for the meeting and they have not arrived, you call them and they tell you “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 that can make them act otherwise.

The truth is that time is a completely subjective category. Human beings 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 measurement that must be adjusted to; For others it is an annoying limit that tells them nothing; and for everyone it is also a measure of their emotional pulse.

Unpunctuality and internal time

Everyone perceives time in a different way. This depends primarily on age. When you are little, hours seem like days and days seem like weeks. Hence children easily become impatient. The older you are, the faster the clock seems to be ticking. You don’t know what time the day or the month ended: you just feel that it was too fast.

Measure The time also depends on the amount of activities you do. If there are many, time seems to pass faster. If there are few of them, your perception will be slower. Obviously, another influencing factor 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, human beings establish a link between their perception of time and punctuality. or tardiness. If circumstances come together so that you understand that time is a very limited and valuable resource, you will surely try to be very precise with your schedules. On the other hand, if your value of time is not so high, you will see a limitation in the exact hours. Some overestimate time and others focus more on the activity itself, regardless of how much time it requires.

That way of perceiving time, slow or fast, affects how events are planned. Many latecomers are actually poor planners. They don’t want to snub anyone. They just don’t calculate well. They are easily distracted and are not assailed by that feeling of urgency that invades others. In this case, tardiness only reflects lack of maturity and lack of maturity.

Hidden meanings in tardiness

Some chronic latecomers do not belong to that innocent category of the absent-minded. Its lack of adjustment to social time entails other peculiarities. Chronic lateness sometimes implies that behind it there is an excessively narcissistic personality.. They are people who want to put others in a condition of need, lack or vulnerability. Ultimately, they use their tardiness as a mechanism of power.

It is also the case of people who arrive late everywhere because they carry great insecurity. They are somehow afraid of the situation of the meeting and that is why they try to postpone it as much as possible. They do it unconsciously, it’s not that they intend to. They simply do not take the necessary measures to be punctual and they do not know the reason. Deep down, they fear being rejected or belittled.

In the same way, there are those who use tardiness to express an unprovoked rebellion.. They resist the situation that gives rise to the meeting. 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 its place and tardiness becomes a vehicle to make it visible.

What is common in all cases of tardiness is that there is an ambivalence. In these cases, there are two realities at play.. The explicit one, which sets a time, and the surreptitious one, which sabotages that agreement. Behind chronic lack of punctuality there is always a hidden message that must be unraveled. It is not bad traffic, nor simple carelessness that gives rise to this inconsiderate custom. Having the habit of not arriving at the agreed time is in many cases a sneaky and annoying way of transmitting a message.

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Images courtesy of Pascal Campion, Rob Gonsalves