Cravings in airports and waiting rooms

There is a particular kind of hour that gets people. The gate before boarding. The waiting room when they are running late. The car outside the school at pickup. Nothing is scheduled, nobody here knows you, and there is nothing to do but be there. No task to hide inside of, no reason anyone could name not to. And into that empty hour the negotiation walks in completely unopposed, because there is nothing else in the room to interrupt it.

That is the real mechanism, and it deserves naming. The urge is not stronger in transit, it is just alone with you. At work it has to compete with a meeting. At home it competes with the kids, the dishes, the thing you are halfway through watching. In the gap it gets the whole floor and unlimited speaking time, and any argument at all sounds convincing when nothing cuts across it for forty minutes. Empty time is not neutral. It is a venue.

Which means the fix is not more willpower once you are inside the gap. It is a decision made before you enter it. Deciding in advance costs you almost nothing, because you are calm and the offer is not yet on the table. Deciding in the middle of it costs everything you have, because you are bored, tired, mildly anxious about the flight, and the only proposal anyone has put forward all afternoon is the bad one. Do your deciding where it is cheap.

So pack for the gap the way you pack a charger. One thing to do, chosen now, before you leave. A book you genuinely want to read, a person to call, something queued up to listen to, a walk to the far end of the terminal and back. Name it out loud so it exists. Ask God to keep you company in the empty hours, which is a small thing to ask and a real one. An occupied gap is not dangerous. Fill it before it fills itself.