Waiting and hastening: that sounds like a contradiction. If we are waiting, then what we are waiting for is not yet there. If we are hastening, then what we have waited for is already in sight. These are the two extremes between which attitudes towards the future are played out. As boundary marks they do not have to be mutually contradictory. Let us translate ‘waiting and hastening’ into our own language and experience: that doesn’t mean a passive waiting-it-out; it means an active expectation.