I noticed something about myself the other day. I have been sucked into the “fast food” mentality that we Americans are guilty of living by. Ugh. It ain’t so pretty when I really stop to look at that realization a bit closer. What exposed it to me was a purchase I made on half.com. I had just finished reading a book by an author I hadn’t read before and I was curious what else was out there by this author. So I looked her up on half.com and saw that all of her books to date ranged somewhere between $.75 and $5. So I thought hey why not? And purchased them all. WHY? Why did I do that? I’ll tell you why. Because I was feeling impatient. I didn’t want to have to wait for them at the Library or wait to purchase them one by one at a store or even on half.com. I mean after all (oh yeah here comes the justification) most of them were only $.75 (you can hear that justifying tone of voice I am using right now, right?) and then I’ll have them when I have them and will never have to push off the gratification I am seeking IMMEDIATELY. Ugh. I told you it wasn’t pretty.
Gratification. We demand it instantly and when it is even the slightest bit delayed (according to our own sense of time of course) we get cranky and out of sorts. Suddenly we can’t find one reason to be grateful. Our gratitude gets flushed down the toilet as our impatience rises. The line at Mickey D’s takes “too long” and we are out of sorts and whiny the rest of the day. We will seek out new people who haven’t yet heard us whine about it to whine about it some more! Since when are we in such a rush that we seek IMMEDIATE gratification? What happened to that timeless principle of “stop and smell the roses”? But Beth! That would take too long! Why are you in such a hurry? Why are we in such a hurry? Does it really increase our paychecks? Does it really add value to our lives? Does it really mean anything at the end of the day if we got home faster because we ran two lights? (You know that only cuts off a minute or so off your time right?) It certainly does not increase our gratitude factor.
Our fuse to impatience is a short one these days. I have been observing people around me, okay fine I’ve been observing myself also, and I see impatience flair up almost immediately. And it is when perceived needs aren’t met right away. When they actually have to practice some patience. This has led our society into a downward spiral of addictions, hostility, poor customer service, selfishness and ungratefulness.
Maybe the fast food industry hasn’t served us well. Maybe microwaves were a bad idea. We got spoiled by these promises of fast service so the need is met quicker and we began to expect it on all fronts. Our impatience has even reared its ugly head in our relationships. If our friends or spouses don’t meet our needs instantly then we dump them, apparently they aren’t any good to us.
Because of our impatience we have lost gratefulness for life. We have lost gratefulness for the roses and their smell. We have lost gratefulness for the time it takes to build a solid relationship with someone. We have lost gratefulness for good food that tastes awesome because time was what it needed the most of.
This isn’t a new realization for me. I have been down this road before but never so struck with as I was as I hit “submit order” on half.com. I’ve come home from Africa twice moving a little slower, giving a little more grace in a fast food line, breathing easy as I drive in bad traffic, stopping to smell a rose or two, not expecting my needs in relationships to be met but instead choosing to meet the needs of others, taking the time to say thank you, and I could go on and on. My Kenyan family and friends have taught me much about patience and gratitude and their direct connection to one another. I have never met so many people who were able to be so grateful for so much as I have my African friends. They don’t respond to impatience, they don’t allow it. Should impatience begin to rear its ugly head in their lives they employ gratefulness to combat it. They choose to be grateful for something instead of respond with ugliness to the delayed or declined gratification. This should be a universal response but my observations of life stateside indicate it is not a universal response but rather a continent based response and our continent ain’t practicing it!
It also is worth noting that immediate gratification has led to an extremely self focused society. Immediate gratification means that everything all the time is about “me, me, me”. We have been trained to not wait for anything. UGH. I remember as a kid I had to wait for a lot of stuff, and some I’m still waiting for! Haha! Am I really missing out on life because I don’t have the thing I thought I needed? No! In fact there’s a good possibility that my life is better for it. Let’s go back to Mickey D’s. I don’t mean to pick on them necessarily but they serve a very useful purpose in my rant today! Because of impatience, which also translates into laziness, people choose Mickey D’s for their lunch or dinner instead of choosing a place where they would have to order from a menu and be served or actually purchase items at a store and cook it themselves! GASP, the horrors of that. (Yeah that’s the sarcasm showing up) So they ingest food that we know, and they know, isn’t the best for them because of impatience. They continue to do this and end up on Biggest Loser. Why? All of it started with the need to be instantly gratified and not have gratification delayed in favor of better choices. Maybe it’s not the best executed example but I’m willing to bet you tracked with me anyway. Why would my life be better for choosing the healthier options at a restaurant or learning to cook better options at home? Because then I would be healthier and not have to feel the need to apply for Biggest Loser! See where I was headed with all that? Delayed gratification, or even being declined gratification, is healthy and can often be the better thing for us! Instead of wolfing down substandard food and not really tasting it you could have the opportunity to eat food that is higher quality and enjoy flavors that explode in your mouth. This would bring you way more pleasure in the eating experience than the Mickey D’s option. I’m just sayin’. I can think of a lot more examples so if this one hasn’t got you thinking in a new direction, email me and I’ll shoot another one your way.
Test yourself for just one day. Every time impatience begins to demand immediate gratification try instead choosing to be grateful for something. GASP. Deny the impatience what it seeks! Decrease the impatience and increase the gratitude. I really think that if we all would purpose to be more grateful and to slow down that we would see a rise in personal and professional productivity. We would be more pleasant to people around us, we would have relationships that are flourishing instead of barely surviving, and we would find ourselves able to extend grace to people on the road or behind the register at a store. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
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