On Demand
In a culture where we can get almost anything we want as soon as we think of it—sometimes by literally lifting a finger and pushing a button—we can easily lose our appreciation for anticipation and our ability to sustain our desires while we work towards our goals.
In other words, we want it all and we want it now.
In a society where we can now shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (whether online or in person) and with suppliers like Amazon offering delivery by the next day—or in some cases, the same day—we are moving towards those science fiction scenarios where speaking a desire into a computer immediately causes the item to appear.
We don't have to adjust our schedules to limited banking hours; we get money on demand with bank machines that spit out cash, and with plastic cards that let us spend even more money than we actually have.
We get information on demand through the internet, without planning ahead for library hours that align with our schedules and without having to manually search through card catalogues that only represent a limited selection of books. We can read the name of a book somewhere, purchase and upload it to an e-reader within a few minutes, all without the fuss and bother of going to the bookstore. (Even those of us who love going to the library and the bookstore find ourselves actually doing it less and less.)
We expect our bosses, colleagues and employees to deliver the goods before we've even finished framing our requests. We consume fast food and take magic pills for instant weight loss. We watch TV shows and movies on demand, listen to music on demand, receive news and information on demand... and we become more demanding every day. We have become restless and unable to live fully in the moments when we have not yet attained our fleeting wish of the moment. We complain in waiting rooms and line-ups; we get road rage in traffic. We are forgetting how to be patient with ourselves and others. We want it all and we want it now... and we want it to be given to us without too much effort on our part.
It seems we are becoming a bit like the grasshopper in the old fable who didn't want to gather and harvest when the weather was fine; he fiddled and danced while the ant laboured in the hot sun. When the winter came, and resources were few and far between, the grasshopper expected the ant to provide for him.
It feels as though tougher times are coming. I hope not...but one way or the other, I do hope that we learn again to slow down, to appreciate the simple life, the excitement of anticipation and the satisfaction of accomplishing our goals by working together.