The impatience of texting fingers keyed up by social media has brought FOMO, the feeling that it would have been better to have arrived somewhere else. A contrary emotion was known to speakers of Inuit languages long ago.
They spoke of iktsuarpok, which is all about other people coming to visit. It’s the emotion of anticipating someone else’s arrival to such an extent that it’s impossible not to peer through the window over and over again, just in case the expected visitor is almost there.
Can such an emotion be felt in an age of electronic communication and pandemic social shutdown, when physical visits have become nearly nonexistent? Perhaps another manifestation of iktsuarpok is felt when we nervously awaken our smartphones over and over again, checking for a notification that has not yet come of a message from a person who ought to be getting in touch with us… any… minute… now.
