To everything there is a season, and to every season there is a 2:45.

That’s the time when people get antsy, even reckless. At school, 2:45 is when the hands of the clock seem like they’re slowly inching backward. The students can’t hold their focus and have to sit on their hands to keep from flicking their pencils or pounding on the desk. It’s the time when the teachers debate whether to let the class out early “just this once” or to give students “workshop time” to start on homework.

It’s the last 20 minutes of a long flight, when the tiny space that has held your body for 10 hours is suddenly torturous and claustrophobic and you consider yanking open the exit hatch, jumping out and swimming the rest of the way rather than being stuck any longer.

It’s the moment when little kids have their ugly meltdowns at Disneyland or the water park or the beach, when parents have had enough and need to be someplace cool and quiet for a while and the kids lose their minds at the thought of the fun coming to the end.

That twitchy, witchy hour might come at 2:15 or 4:45 or last call, but the crucial element is the anxiety of transition. Burdens that have long been borne with grace can become unbearable when the end is near. The perfect day is suddenly ruined with the first realization that, at some point, it will be over. Change is hard, but the anticipation of change brings its own brand of anxiety. Waiting on the cusp — that pointed end where two curves meet — requires balance, calm and courage.

We are on the cusp of many things in our islands and in our country, and the anticipation is bringing out fretful thinking and bad behavior.

We are on the cusp of a new presidency, and the intensity of this election has caused stunning outbursts on the national stage for the world to see.

Here at home, Oahu’s multibillion-dollar rail project is hung up on a point between dogged dedication to completing it no matter the cost and frustration so extreme that walking away from the mess seems a sensible option.

Hawaii is at the tip between keeping some of the world’s most fertile lands in commercial agriculture or turning them into great tracts of development. There is no other option, no 21st-century Garden of Eden where parasites and viruses stay away on principle and profits don’t matter.

The race for Honolulu mayor is nearing that point between how things have been and how things need to be. Even if Kirk Caldwell pulls off a win, it is clear that he will have to do more than pave streets and refurbish sewers in the next four years.

People are antsy, wanting things to be better but mostly wanting the waiting to be over, and agitated enough to say and do rash things just to break the tension.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.