An Instant world and Instant Dream

We so often expect things to happen instantly. We are set in a world where just about anything can be done in a short amount of time. We can order food from our phones, buy plane tickets from our phones, we don’t even have to dial numbers to contact our friends. We can cook food in as little as 30 seconds with the mighty microwave.

We can even pay our bills from our phones or computers. We don’t even have to travel across the country or world to contact our relatives or friends. We don’t even have to write them letters of good or bad news anymore. We rarely have to plan ahead to meet up with friends.

We can even pay a monthly fee to have just about limitless choices of movies and TV to watch with no commercials. No more having to drive to the movie store and hope there is a rental available. We can download music instantly, we no longer have to hope we can catch the song on the radio and record it with a tape. We can even film and take photos from our phones. We have so much at our fingertips, so much in our household that speeds up our lives. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and what it has done for us, Its great, but can also be abused.

I feel like these days, many of us fall into that “instant” world trap. We get so comfortable with everything being right there right now. We no longer have to wait for the internet to dial itself. We don’t get disconnected from the internet when someone calls us and we pick up.

So much has changed in the past 28 years of my life. So much has changed in the past 50 years. Things just seem to be getting faster and faster each year. And as things get faster, I feel we become blind from where we started and expect all things to happen smoothly and happily. We expect results before we even blink.

Just the other day, I was on my phone and it took 6 freaking seconds, 6 seconds to load a webpage from my phone. I was in the gym trying to check an order I had from Amazon. And in between my set I decided to check it. And guess what, my phone decided to take its sweet ass time. Well at least that’s what I thought it was doing.

When it happened I felt a little bit of anger rise to my head. I was pissed it took so damn long, 6 seconds felt like a minute. After my short stint of anger, I realized what I just did. I got angry at an imminent object because it wouldn't load a website, that technically doesn't physically exist, to load onto my phone.

I thought to myself, really, am I really getting angry at 6 seconds? I mean, I remember being as kid and waiting like 30 mins for a 5 minute video to load. That was low resolution too. After thinking through all that I thought, so many of us do this. So many of us get caught in this world of instant BS. We tend to want everything now.

It even invades our lives to a whole. It invades how we run our days, how quickly people should respond to emails, texts, and phone calls. We even grow impatient with commercials. Fucking commercials that take up about 15 mins per hour of your show. Seriously? Have we grown so short on patients that 3 minutes, even 6 seconds has become too long?!

You can see how this technology invades our lives on the daily. The worst part is, we are so used to it now we don’t even notice what we are doing to ourselves. Most people wont even read a news article, they'll read the title and maybe the first paragraph and go from there. This whole TLDR, Too Long Didn't Read BS is killing us. Well, its at least killing me.

How can something be too long that you didn't read it? Unless someone sends you a damn book through an email or text how the hell do you not have time to read it?

This impatient style of life that is growing is even hurting our own personal dreams. We see people yearly become famous almost instantly on YouTube, or some other way through social media. We see all this instant gratification from social media and other avenues of technology. So much that we try to embed that instant shit right into our dreams, our lives.

If it doesn't happen as fast as that other person, most the time we quit. We stop what we were trying and think it will never happen for us. I am guilty of it, I have tried multiple times to make a name of myself through social media. Nothing ever came of it. Because I had the mindset that it all needed to happen instantly, or at least quicker that I thought it should. That rewards are to be given within the next few months of my posts or whatever entrepreneur venture I was on.

I got so caught up in all this fast paced technology and world. I forgot to look at what is really important. I forgot to look at where all of this started, where I started, where technology started. We have come so far in such a short period its mind blowing.

These past weeks I have really had to step back and remember something my public speaking professor told me. “Its only 5 minutes, you only have to stand up there for 5 minutes and talk. Think about it, in the grand scheme of things 5 minutes is nothing. In the years you have been alive, 5 minutes isn't even a grain of sand on the scale of your existence.” Okay, I added a little there from what she had said, but that is the jest of it.

Things may be moving fast around us but time is still relative to the value you give it. If you feel times is precious, you will embrace as much of it as you can. You will realize that those 6 seconds or 3 minutes of commercials, are really nothing. That reading a 15, even a 30 minute article to really understand things is nothing. We get so caught up in this instant world, we judge personal and world events before we even see the evidence or question the other person. But they are seconds and minutes that we should cherish. Time is not unlimited so we shouldn't treat like it is. Technology will always grow faster but time will always stay the same.

And with that being said, I really wanted to note something. That in life we are trying to find things to be done in the most efficient way possible. We see efficiency all around us. We try to do the same with ourselves, we try to get that body we want sooner, we try to get to our dreams quicker, we try to find a way to make money faster. But the truth is, the only way to get the results you want. Is to embrace each second, use it wisely, and work hard with each second toward what you want.

Dreams will never become a reality over night. That body you want will never happen over night. That million, billion, trillion, or whatever money you want wont happen over night. Non of this will happen over night unless you push yourself to gain it. The funny thing is, after pushing yourself through the process to gain what you want. It will all seem like it happened over night.

It will all seem like you found a short cut to the world. When really, all you did, was cherish the time you had, pushed your limits, and worked your ass off. So what ever your life is right now. Sit back, look at it, enjoy, and don’t waste any more time complaining about how long it takes for something to happen. Life is short and time has no leniency.