Life is woven by a continuous thread of events and expectations. “Waiting is a pain” – says the first sentence of the book – but waiting is inevitable; It is something we do constantly: we wait for the pain to stop, for a response, for a promise to be fulfilled or for laughter to break out after a joke; We wait at the doctor's office, in line at the supermarket or at the train station.

The unavoidable moments of waiting allow us to value our past but also shape the future. There is no growth or authentic development without waiting, the reward always requires a certain delay, immediate gratification ends up leaving us dissatisfied. In this literary essay, Andrea Köhler reviews key passages from different works of Western thought and literature to make us see that waiting is, surely, the most fundamental of human experiences. "Without pretending to be a philosophical study of pause, this book is written in the hope of being able to point out the gratifying nature of slowness and waiting."