I was scrolling through my social media accounts the other day and I realized that our world has changed so much over the years. We live in a world where we seek instant gratification and want immediate results. But what about when we must wait?
There is an English proverb - good things come to those who wait. Often, the benefits of waiting patiently were usually a better outcome rather than rushing into something. If someone was willing to work hard and wait for the desired results rather than ruining the chances of success, the wait would be worth it.
For years, society was willing to wait for those results. We relied on the information to be handed down, usually by letter, which sometimes took days or weeks to receive. The invention of the telephone increased the rate of speed in information sharing, but not everyone had a telephone. As the world of technology changed, so did the norm for having such luxuries. If you think about it, it has only been roughly 20 years since having a cell phone has been considered normal.
Information is now at our fingertips, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We no longer need to go to a store to shop, go to the bank to cash a cheque or even to our children’s sporting events as parents know it will be live-streamed. We have put more trust in online diagnoses over those of our medical professionals. And when we do seek out medical advice, we want a quick fix or a magic pill to make it all go away.
We share our photos and videos online, hoping for that rush of dopamine as the thumbs up and hearts start flooding the screen. Our world is always looking for bigger, better and brighter.
We have become a society of life hacks. We are searching for any trick or shortcut that can increase our productivity and efficiency in any situation. Anything to reduce the amount of time we must wait for the outcome we are looking for. Everywhere you look, someone is sharing a hack they have come up with, which hardly seems more efficient than waiting.
While there may be some life hacks that are beneficial, we need to find moments of slowing down. We need to pause, give ourselves time to process our day, even sometimes multiple times a day. When we don’t, our children grow up faster, we miss out on things we feel are important and before you know it, life has passed us by.
