Time and Impatience

Have you ever noticed how much of an impatient society we have become?  How much we don’t like to wait for anything?  This week I realized it greatly when after a visit to the ophthalmologist, I was given two sets of eye drops to administer 15 minutes apart (one twice a day, one four times a day….four..four times!), and after each one, I was to press the inner corner of my eyelids closed for 2 minutes.  The waiting drove me insane.  Me.  A person who can sit for hours reading or watching the birds, and doing nothing at all.  It drove me up a wall!  I started using the time to analyze just how impatient I and others have been, and I confess I plead guilty to all of the below except driving at the speed of light and picking up my child two blocks away (but only because we lived two blocks away and it’s my driveway the lazy parents are blocking.)

You’re on the freeway doing the speed limit or just above, and some joker comes up behind you at the speed of light, rides your bumper until he/she can pass, then gives you the one fingered wave.  Maybe you’re cruising along in heavy traffic at 5 miles over the limit, get behind someone driving exactly the limit and you become impatient, muttering, “c’mon gramps, get with it.”

Does anyone wait for the microwave to count down the last 10 seconds, or does everyone open it up, grab their lunch, and slam the door?  I rarely saw the microwave at work or see the one at home sitting there with the actual time of day displayed instead of 11 or fewer seconds.  Seriously?  We can no longer wait five seconds for something?

Raise your hand if you get cranky when the website you are accessing on the internet doesn’t pop up instantaneously.

Confess if you ask your spouse or kids to do something and they don’t hop to it immediately, thereby ticking you off.

How many times have you turned the burner or oven up a little higher than recommended because it was taking too long, and who hasn’t taken damp clothes out of the dryer and hung them up to finish drying because it was just taking too damned long.

When you head to the drive-thu fast food/coffee place, if there’s a long line, do you keep on driving?  Do you find it excruciating to wait for a long train to pass at a crossing?  If you pick up your children from school, do you wait in the pick up line like a proper parent, or do you park a block or two away and have your offspring walk to you in rain/hail/sleet/snow because it’s faster and you can play on your phone longer and not have to constantly keep inching your vehicle forward?

Do you hold the elevator door open for someone you see headed for it, or do you push the close button repeatedly, hoping to just get going and not have to stop at every floor before yours?  When your spouse, significant other, child, parent, sibling, friend, co-worker is talking are your listening, formulating your rebuttal, checking off your to-do list, or are your thinking “Lord, make him/her get to the point and shut up?”

We have all become so used to instant access to everything, most of us are unwilling to wait for much of anything.  Why?  What difference does that 10 seconds or 10 minutes really make?  Will it really change your life?  Is it really that important?  Does it really matter?  In ten years will you triumphantly recall the time you saved six seconds in nuking your lunch or that time you got to your destination 5 minutes early?

We all need to take a page from the playbook from before 20^th century technology sped us up, and just slow down and wait.  I’d be willing to bet there’d be less high blood pressure, less depression, less anxiety, fewer fights, fewer grumpy people, and a lot more smiles, and less stress in our daily lives.

It could be a motto for living….Wait a Minute….Get Healthy.