Waiting for the marshmallows: on patience & delayed gratification

It is sometimes ironic and almost amusing how life will surprise us with challenges in the areas where we struggle most. Patience has never been my forté, and while I have improved myself in that regard over the course of a decade or so, I admit that I am often incapable of waiting the remaining three seconds for the microwave to heat up a bowl of meat for my cats.

And now that I’m in a long-distance relationship, I’ve been challenged with a lot of waiting and longing before my partner and I can settle together in one place. And while this can be hard to endure at times, I have learned to treat it as a training of patience, for, as Lisa McKay says in an article for Lifehack, “When you are being patient in your long-distance relationship you are not just nurturing love, you are developing your character”.

This training is indeed very valuable, since waiting is something we generally struggle with in the modern age. We are surrounded by an increasing number of things advertised as “instant” which not only take away the need for self-improvement, but make us even more impatient. Instant delivery, instant nail varnish, instant meal, instant coffee, instant download, instant sex. In his article Instant gratification is making us perpetually impatient for the Boston Globe, Christopher Muther