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what is it that makes a dripping faucet so annoying?

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a single drip is an innocuous sound and probably not even very loud

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the sensory properties of each drip are pretty constant

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you have a non-sensory awareness that these sensations are not new

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drip number 42 doesn't differ from drip number 1

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drip number 1 was then, and drip number 42 is now

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the difference is time

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our awareness of time, of the temporal property of all intentional objects, is a global and universal invariant of our consciousness

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temporal awareness is always present

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time has meaning, compare:

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do you love me? / of course

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do you love me? / (3 seconds) of course

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we are sensitive to passing milliseconds in our interchanges

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the secret of comedy is timing

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if fact, timing is the secret gauge of all our actions, especially our inner actions

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built into every perception of an object is the awareness whether the object is moving or not

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the superposed awareness of the just-past is an invariant in all perception

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time has interested philosophers from Plato on down

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but a sophisticated treatment of time begins with phenomenology, and with Edmund Husserl in particular

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consciousness is a sandwich of three temporal layers

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retention: the immediate awareness of the just-past

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primal impression: the influx of perception that presses upon us in the exact present

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protention: the immediate awareness of the soon-to-be future