Yesterday the metro service was disrupted. People kept waiting for a train for quite a while.Why were we waiting?
Probably for some of us there was no suitable alternative: they live far away and the taxi is too expensive.
But what about the rest of us? We could have walked, for example.
We did not know how long it would take before a train arrived, we were getting anxious and annoyed. Yet, we gave it more and more time to start functioning again.
Had they made a formal announcement, we would all reorganise ourselves - move on with our life, so to say. But, in the metro, as usually in life, there was no formal statement "hey you, stop waiting, it doesn't work".
Under uncertainty, why do we give it more and more chances when we see that things don't work and waiting is going to be a waste of time? Is it because we still like to hope? Or is it because of laziness?
Perhaps it's inertia: keeping a conduct we always had (although it has become pointless) requires less effort than facing a new challenge.
Until when? At which point do people realise that walking up and down the platform, making phone calls, reading a book, thinking about life may be a more or less nice way to kill the time but is not a way to arrive at destination? How long does it take until we finally take action?
There comes a time when we decide to step out of our comfort zone and walk to work, instead of wasting time waiting for a train to be shared with many other frustrated commuters. That's when we realize that a healthy walk to work is way better than dragging our feet waiting for the supposedly but mistakingly comfortable train ride.....
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