The Hidden Meanings Of Lack Of Punctuality

Lack of punctuality can be hopeless. Nothing is more uncomfortable than agreeing with someone at a certain time and then seeing the minutes go by without the person showing up. Some don’t even arrive in the next few minutes, but they can take hours or even never arrive. The worst thing is that they are almost always repeat offenders: they never get anywhere in time.

If it’s time for the meeting and they haven’t arrived yet, you call and say “I’m on my way”. Some say “I’m leaving” when they should have arrived. Your lack of punctuality is chronic. There is no human force that can make them act otherwise.

The truth is, time is a completely subjective category. Human beings have invented different ways to measure it. Even so, each person perceives it and manages it according to a series of subjective variables. For some, it is an exact measure that needs to be adjusted; for others it is an uncomfortable limit that means nothing to them; and for others it is also a measure of their emotional pulse.

Lack of punctuality and interior time

Each person perceives time in a different way. This depends first of all on age. When you’re little, hours seem like days and days seem like weeks. That’s why children get impatient so easily. The older we are, the faster the clock seems to be. You don’t know when the day or month ended: you just know it was too fast.

The measure of time also depends on the amount of activities you do. If there are many, time seems to pass faster. If they are few, their perception will be slower. Obviously, another influencing factor is your mood. The happy moments pass quickly, while in the stages of suffering or problems it is as if the hours stopped.

Whatever the case, human beings establish a link between their perception of time and punctuality or lack of it. If circumstances coincide for you to understand that time is a very limited and valuable resource, you will certainly try to be very precise in your schedule. However, if your timing is not so high, you will see the exact times as a limitation. Some overestimate the time and others look more at the activity itself, regardless of how much time it takes.

This way of perceiving time, slow or fast, interferes with how events are planned. Many individuals who lack punctuality are actually poor planners. They don’t want to despise anyone. They just don’t calculate well. They are easily distracted and this sense of urgency that invades others does not overwhelm them. In this case, the lack of punctuality only reflects distraction and lack of maturity.

Hidden Meanings of Lack of Punctuality

Some people with chronic lack of punctuality don’t belong in this innocent category of the distracted. Its lack of social time adjustment enters into other peculiarities. Chronic delay sometimes implies that behind it there is an excessively narcissistic personality. They are people who want to put the other in a condition of need, lack or vulnerability. In short, they use their lack of punctuality as a power mechanism.

There is also the case of people who arrive late at all places because of great insecurity. Somehow they fear the situation of the meeting and therefore try to postpone it as long as possible. They do this unconsciously, it’s not on purpose. They simply don’t take the necessary steps to be punctual and don’t know why. Deep down, they fear being rejected or belittled.

Likewise, there are those who use the lack of punctuality to express an unfounded rebellion. They resist the situation that the encounter provokes. Your late arrival is a way of making this rejection visible, but at the same time a way of posing a challenge. Maybe there is something that is not in the right place and the lack of punctuality becomes a vehicle to make it visible.

What is common in all cases of lack of punctuality is that there is an ambivalence. In these cases, there are two realities at play. The explicit, which sets the time, and the hidden, which sabotages this agreement. Behind the chronic lack of punctuality there is always a hidden message that needs to be demystified. It is not bad traffic or simple carelessness that gives rise to this unconsidered habit. Keeping to the habit of not being on time is often a disguised and uncomfortable way to convey a message.

Images courtesy of Pascal Campion, Rob Gonsalves.