TIME AS EMOTION: WHY A FIVE-MINUTE WAIT FEELS DIFFERENT WITH FRIENDS
Five minutes. On a clock, it's the same every time. But emotionally? It's never equal. Waiting five minutes for a friend to arrive at a café feels light, even welcome. You scroll, people-watch, sip water, maybe smile at the waiter. That same five minutes waiting for a stranger to respond to a vulnerable text can stretch into an ache. Five minutes in a tense meeting feels like slow suffocation. Five minutes on hold with customer service? Endless. Time, it turns out, is not just measurement—it’s emotion. We often treat time as objective. Schedules. Calendars. Countdown clocks. But how we feel time depends entirely on our relationship to the moment—and more importantly, to the people involved. With friends, five minutes late doesn’t rupture anything. If anything, it gives you time to breathe, to daydream, to think about what you’ll talk about. You know they’re coming. You trust the rhythm. You can sense their footsteps before they appear. The wait is filled with anticip...