Distant Horizons of Expectation
Long waiting makes a person perceive the future as something indeterminate and distant, precisely because the future exists only as an expectation, rather than as a concrete event. The internal perception of time is such that the present is fleeting, while the future, remaining merely a sphere of expectation, gradually dissolves into uncertainty and distance. As stated in one of the sources: "Not a prolonged time is the future - it does not exist; a prolonged future is prolonged waiting for the future. Not a prolonged past exists; a prolonged past is a prolonged memory of the past." (source: link txt) This assertion emphasizes that since the future does not have a fixed content and is constantly postponed, our consciousness perceives it as something nebulous and deferred. If the wait is extended, then the expectancy of the future itself becomes so prolonged that its possibility of occurrence loses its concreteness, becoming less tangible and nearly elusive. As confirmed by a second source: "the longer we wait for it, the more our hopes turn out to be illusory, the hazier the possibility of its occurrence in the future becomes; it recedes for us into some elusive distance, we wait for it not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but only 'in a few years', and no one can predict anymore how many years we must wait for it..." (source: link txt) Thus, when the waiting continues for a long time, it leads the future to cease being perceived as something real and attainable, turning it into an indeterminate, foggy horizon, removed from our actual life coordinates. This psychological sense of uncertainty and remoteness arises from the fact that our hopes and expectations do not continue into the concrete present, but are only encapsulated in a long, continuous process of waiting.