Now, if the phone vibrates against the cold granite one more time without a confirmation, I am going to slide it into the garbage disposal. It is 2:42 p.m., and Priya is currently performing a specific kind of modern penance. She is wearing her outdoor shoes inside her own house-a cardinal sin in her culture-because she cannot psychologically commit to taking them off until she knows the installer is actually coming. To take off the shoes is to admit defeat. To take off the shoes is to signal to the universe that she has accepted the ‘maybe’ as a ‘no.’ Her phone battery is sitting at 12%, and the last message she received was at 10:02 a.m.: ‘We should be there later today.’
The Emotional Sedative of Ambiguity
That phrase, ‘later today,’ is a linguistic abyss. In the world of project management and home renovation, ‘today’ has ceased to be a measurement of 24 hours and has instead become an emotional sedative. It is what we say to people when we want them to stop asking us questions for at least 12 hours. It is a soft-focus lens applied to a jagged reality. We treat scheduling like logistics, but it is actually a profound failure of shared language. When 12 adults agree to meet ‘today,’ they are not agreeing on a timestamp; they are agreeing on a mood. And usually, that mood is one of avoidance.
I realized 2 days ago that I have been pronouncing the word ‘epitome’ as ‘epi-tome’ in my head for nearly 32 years, and honestly, that feels related to this. We walk around with these private versions of reality, these internal dictionaries where words mean whatever we need them to mean to survive the next 82 minutes. If I can convince myself that ‘soon’ means ‘within the next hour’ while you believe ‘soon’ means ‘before the sun dies,’ we can both exist in a state of temporary, fraudulent peace.
Temporal Dyslexia
Stella C.-P., a dyslexia intervention specialist with 22 years of experience in untangling how the human brain processes symbols, sees this every day. For her students, a ‘b’ and a ‘d’ are not just letters; they are unstable objects. She argues that for many adults, time functions in the same way. We see a calendar entry for 2:00 p.m. and our brains perform a sort of temporal dyslexia. We see the shape of the commitment, but we don’t actually process the gravity of it. Stella once told me about a client who couldn’t understand why being 32 minutes late was a problem if the sun was still up. To that person, ‘today’ was a binary state: either the sun is up or it is not. The granularity of minutes was just noise.
The unseen cost incurred when time is treated as a disposable resource.
The Cost of the ‘Maybe’
This social cost of ambiguity is staggering. When an installer says ‘later today,’ they are effectively holding Priya hostage. She cannot go to the grocery store. She cannot take a nap. She cannot start a project that requires her to be messy. Her entire existence is compressed into a 2-foot radius around her charging cable. We calculate the cost of projects in dollars-perhaps $1122 for the labor or $522 for the materials-but we never calculate the cost of the ‘maybe.’ We don’t factor in the 82 minutes of ambient anxiety or the missed childcare opportunities or the slow, poisonous erosion of trust that happens when someone treats your time as a disposable resource.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the sound of a vibrating phone. There is a specific frequency that indicates a text message, a sharp, buzzing intrusion that promises either relief or further obfuscation. For Priya, every buzz is a gamble. Is it the installer saying ‘I’m 12 minutes away,’ or is it her mother asking if she’s seen that video of the cat playing the flute? The disappointment of the latter is a physical weight. It’s not that she doesn’t love her mother; it’s that her brain is currently optimized for a single, specific data point that refuses to materialize. It’s like waiting for a sneeze that never comes, a state of physiological tension that burns through 102 percent of your patience before the clock even hits 3:00 p.m.
Actually, I just realized I don’t even know if cats can play the flute, but in the fever dream of waiting for a contractor, anything seems possible. The mind wanders into these strange cul-de-sacs when it is denied a certain future. You start counting the patterns in the rug. You notice for the first time that the molding in the corner doesn’t quite meet at a 92-degree angle. You start to resent the very air in the room because it is the same air you were breathing 2 hours ago when you were still optimistic.
The Honesty of Stone
This is why I have a deep respect for businesses that treat ‘today’ as a sacred contract rather than a suggestion. In an industry notorious for ‘vague-booking’ their arrival times, finding a reliable partner feels like finding a flaw in the Matrix. When you are looking at something as permanent and tactile as your kitchen, you want that same level of literalism. You want the stone to be exactly where it was promised. I’ve seen houses where the kitchen remains a hollow shell for 12 days because someone couldn’t define ‘Tuesday.’ It’s the reason people get obsessive about material selection; you want something solid like the products from cascadecountertops because at least the stone doesn’t lie to you about its schedule. The stone is there, it is heavy, and it is honest.
Ego Preservation vs. Time Respect
Choosing comfort over accountability.
Admitting delay respects the other’s life.
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Stella C.-P. often says that the most successful interventions she performs aren’t about teaching people to read better, but teaching them to see the world as it actually is, rather than how they fear it might be. There is a profound vulnerability in admitting you don’t know what time you will arrive. It is much easier to say ‘later’ than to say ‘I am currently 52 minutes behind schedule because I miscalculated the traffic on Route 2.’ One is a lie that preserves your ego; the other is a truth that respects the other person’s life. We choose the lie 92 percent of the time because we are terrified of the silence that follows a disappointment.
The Vague-Passive Voice
But the silence of waiting is much louder. Priya is now at 2% battery. She has moved from the kitchen to the hallway, a transition that feels significant even though it has changed nothing about her situation. She is considering calling the office again, but she knows what they will say. They will use the ‘vague-passive’ voice: ‘He should be heading your way shortly.’ ‘Shortly’ is the cousin of ‘soon,’ another word that exists only to fill the space where a fact should be. It is a linguistic placeholder, a Styrofoam peanut in the package of human interaction.
If I Owe You $22, I Don’t Give You ‘Some’ Money
What if we stopped? What if we treated time with the same precision we treat currency? If I owe you $22, I don’t give you ‘some’ money ‘later today.’ I give you 22 individual dollars at a specific moment. Why do we allow the hours of our lives to be treated as if they have less value than a handful of paper? The answer, I suspect, is that we are all afraid of being held to account. We want the freedom to be flaky, so we grant that same freedom to others, creating a collective hallucination of productivity that falls apart the moment someone actually needs to get a countertop installed.
I remember 2022 as the year of the ‘Great Wait.’ Everything was on backorder, and ‘today’ became a mythical era that we were all striving toward but never quite reaching. We got used to the delay. We normalized the ambiguity. But Priya, sitting on her hallway floor with 2% battery and shoes that feel like lead weights, hasn’t normalized it. She is still holding onto the radical idea that words should mean things. She still believes that if a human being says ‘today,’ they should be standing in her doorway before the streetlights come on.
Words are the only infrastructure we have.
Perception vs. Reality
Stella C.-P. once had a student who told her that the clock on the wall was ‘lying’ because it kept moving even when he was bored. We laugh at that, but isn’t that what we all feel? When we are the ones running late, time is a runaway train, 12 minutes disappearing in the blink of an eye. When we are the ones waiting, time is a stagnant pool, 12 minutes stretching out into an eternity of 722 seconds. Our perception is a liar, which is exactly why we need the cold, hard reality of a clock. We need to mean what we say, not because it’s polite, but because it’s the only way to keep each other sane.
The Adrenaline of Basic Reliability
As the clock hits 3:12 p.m., Priya finally hears a heavy engine rumble into the driveway. Her heart leaps in a way it shouldn’t have to. She shouldn’t feel a surge of adrenaline just because a person did the thing they said they would do. But that is the world we have built. We have turned basic reliability into a miracle. She stands up, her knees cracking-a sound she’s been noticing more since she turned 42-and heads for the door. She doesn’t take her shoes off. She doesn’t need to now. The ‘today’ has finally, miraculously, become ‘now.’
But as she reaches for the handle, she wonders how many other Priyas are still sitting on their floors, staring at a battery icon that is about to turn red, waiting for a ‘later’ that will never arrive. We burn so much of our lives in the hallway of the ‘maybe.’ It’s a quiet tragedy, measured in 12-minute increments, until we eventually run out of ‘todays’ altogether. Is it possible to build a world where we don’t have to wait with our shoes on?
The Stakes of Ambiguity
Eroded Trust
Low expectation setting poisons relationships.
Wasted Hours
When time is elastic, nothing gets done.
Mental Tethering
Hostage to the possibility of ‘now.’