With how fast technology is, we are obsessed with getting instant gratification. If your web page doesn’t load fast enough, you complain about how slow the Wi-Fi is, if your text doesn’t send right when you want it to, you complain we have a bad signal. I think that technology has destroyed our will to be patient in the world. If we don’t get something or achieve something right when we want to, we get upset. The world is littered with advertisements promising the fastest delivery and the quickest service. With this clouding our judgment, it is easy to forget that some things take time, and we can’t get quick results just like that. A lot of things in life take long work and dedication with the results slowly being achieved.
I was recently on YouTube and saw a video for “9 steps to do the splits.” As a former ballerina I have lost all of my flexibility and have been wanting to stretch and gain it back over the summer. When I clicked on this video, another one popped up on the side titled “How to get the splits in one day.” Unless you are already completely flexible I think it is almost impossible to get the splits down in one day. But with society reminding us that we like to be able to do things in the fastest and easiest way possible, how to accomplish something in just one day seems like an intriguing choice.
The title of the video is a way to get people to click because the video creator knows that people crave fast results. I knew it could not be true, but the promise of accomplishing something in one day still got me to click just in case there was some secret to getting the splits down in a day so I would not have to spend months working if I did not have to. Of course, when I did click on the video the first thing the girl told me was that there was actually no guarantee to get your splits in a day, that it all depended on how flexible you already were. I promptly clicked off the video, discovering what I already knew, there was no quick fix to something that took time and dedication. I just had to be patient.
A how-to video on YouTube is just a snippet of the problem in the world of how we expect things to be easy and fast. There are countless examples of how people try to get the best results out of something in the easiest, fastest ways. It’s has all become very commonplace. Things such as Spark notes, diet fads, workout plans and self-help books all promise things in the easiest ways possible. These entice consumers to getting what they want the fastest.
Sure, sometimes getting things done the quickest way is nice when it is possible and you get good results. But not everything can be achieved in an instant. The best things in life are the things that take time, hard work and dedication. There are no shortcuts in life. Sometimes we all need to take a step back and realize not everything needs to be finished in an instant. A text may be sent in an instant these days, but that doesn’t mean everything has to happen that quickly.
