When Mr. Chen retired, he didn’t miss the meetings.

He missed the waiting.

Mr. Chen is 71, a former mid-level civil servant who spent four decades inside Taiwan’s government offices—first under martial law, then through democratization, digitization, and the slow transformation of the island into one of Asia’s most efficient societies. His career was built on queues: paper files stacked on desks, citizens sitting on metal chairs clutching numbered slips, approvals that took weeks or months to move from one department to another.

“Waiting wasn’t a problem,” he tells me. “It was how the system showed you it was working.”

Today, he believes Taiwan has lost that skill entirely.

Waiting as a Civic Muscle

Mr. Chen grew up in 1960s Taiwan, when time moved differently. People waited for ration cards, for bus routes, for permits, for their turn to speak. Waiting was not framed as inefficiency; it was framed as order.

You learned patience not because you had no choice—but because patience signaled respect. For the process. For hierarchy. For the idea that things should not move too fast, because speed could be dangerous.

“In the old days,” he says, “if something happened immediately, we didn’t trust it.”

Waiting created legitimacy.

When Speed Became a Virtue

Taiwan’s transformation over the last 30 years has been extraordinary. It ranks among the world’s most digitally advanced societies, with near-universal internet access, world-class public transport, and highly responsive government services. Many permits that once took weeks now take minutes. Online portals replaced counters. Paper vanished.

Efficiency became a point of national pride.

But Mr. Chen thinks something else disappeared too.

“People don’t experience time together anymore,” he says. “They experience delay as a personal insult.”

In the past, waiting was communal. You waited with others. You complained quietly together. You understood the delay was shared.

Now, delay feels individualized. If an app freezes, if a train is late, if a form doesn’t load instantly, the frustration is immediate—and explosive.

The New Anger Curve

Mr. Chen volunteers once a week at a local district office, helping elderly residents navigate digital forms. He watches younger citizens arrive already tense.

“They don’t get angry slowly,” he says. “They arrive angry.”

What used to be patience has been replaced by expectation. And expectation, when unmet, curdles quickly into outrage.

This isn’t unique to Taiwan, but the contrast is especially stark here because the country works so well. When systems are mostly efficient, even small delays feel like failures.

Waiting has lost its social meaning. It’s no longer a shared experience—it’s a breakdown.

Time, Politics, and Protest

Mr. Chen doesn’t romanticize the past. He’s clear about that.

Waiting once masked injustice. Bureaucracy delayed accountability. Slowness was sometimes a tool of control.

But he worries that a society unable to wait is also a society that struggles to negotiate.

“Democracy takes time,” he says. “Consensus takes time. But people want answers at the speed of notifications.”

He has watched political discourse harden, patience thin, and public tolerance for ambiguity shrink. In his view, the loss of waiting has reshaped how citizens relate not just to government—but to one another.

The Disappearing Pause

There’s something else Mr. Chen misses: the pause.

Waiting created space for reflection. You stood in line and rehearsed your thoughts. You reconsidered what you were about to ask. You adjusted expectations before reaching the counter.

Now, frictionless systems remove that pause entirely. Requests are sent instantly, without emotional processing. Complaints are filed mid-anger. Responses are expected immediately.

“We’ve removed the buffer,” he says. “And now everything hits too hard.”

What the Young Don’t See

Mr. Chen doesn’t blame younger generations. He understands why they feel entitled to speed. They were raised inside systems designed to respond instantly.

But he worries they’ve inherited efficiency without resilience.

“When everything is fast, you don’t learn how to endure,” he says. “You only learn how to demand.”

In a crisis—whether political, economic, or environmental—that lack of endurance becomes dangerous.

A Skill Worth Remembering

Mr. Chen still waits deliberately.

He arrives early and sits. He watches. He refuses to refresh apps. He treats waiting as practice—a way of staying steady in a world that no longer rewards stillness.

“Waiting doesn’t mean doing nothing,” he says. “It means accepting that not everything bends to you.”

Taiwan’s success has been built on adaptation, discipline, and collective effort. Mr. Chen believes patience belongs on that list too.

Because the ability to wait, he says, isn’t about slowness.

It’s about trust—trust that systems, people, and time itself will eventually move forward, even when you’re not pushing them every second.

And once that trust disappears, no amount of speed can replace it.