Admit it. We've lost the art of Patience. Our lifestyles have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. With the hectic pace at which we live our lives, patience has been the biggest casualty. Imagine yourselves, in 1995, searching for a piece of information. You'd have to forage in bulky encyclopedias that Reader's Digest sent you ocassionally, in YearBooks from Manorama or CSR or contact people who were likely to know more about whatever you were searching for. Times have changed, and strikingly too. You have unbridled access today, to any information in the world today--at the click of a mouse as the saying goes. You dont need a doctor to tell you how complex your ailment is. Just check online. Its either Wikipedia, or the latest Wolfram. You want to know how much your bank balance is?Save yourself the trip to the local bank--and the protracted queues--get yourself updates on your mobile or check your online banking account. You're bored reading a two page article on the web, even if its on your favourite subject.And youcan always skip to the next tab--to google,or to Orkut or Twitter(my latest fad).Fed up of a 3-minute 'lecture' on the telly about an air-crash?switch to the next channel, an old movie--one that you've always wanted to watch. Engaging for 10 minutes and then it isn't exciting enough. So what?The next channel has got even more entertaining goodies lined-up for you.
Technology has made us its slaves.It has spoilt us, made us greedy. We want more.Even more. Things more valuable, more exciting. We've lost patience. We want things in a jiffy. Which explains why we had such obnoxious hoardings following the Mumbai attacks calling for the gunning down of politicians one-by-one and slogans such as 'Enough is Enough'. We just cannot fathom that democracy and the evolution of a nation, is a slow process. So are many other things. Many marriages today are on the verge of break-ups. Why?We've quarreled for a whole week. We just cannot live together anymore. One week's tenacity is how much a marriage is worth.People just dont give things time. So you're twenty-five years old and you still haven't made it big in life??So that probably makes you a loser, doesn't it?Suicide man, a quick-fix solution, thats what you should be doing. You've had a quarrel with your parents? Its time to move-out/run away and show them who's Boss!
Sure, things dont move at the same pace as they used to earlier. Faster times call for faster action, faster decisions. But Patience my friend, is at the bottom of your card-house. I remember narrating to a friend of mine a story I had heard about one of my favourite writers--R K Narayan. Heres the wiki entry relating the story...
"In the autumn of 1930, on a sudden spurt of inspiration, writing of his first novel “Swami and Friends” started. It was as if a window had opened, and through it Narayan saw a little town and its rail station, the Mempi Forest and the Nallapa’s Grove, the Albert Mission school, Market Road, the River Sarayu. Its inhabitants appeared, and Malgudi was born.
...
“Swami and Friends” was completed and sent to publishers. It repeatedly returned. Narayan dispatched it yet another time and gave the return address as one of his friend’s in London. He wrote to the friend requesting the manuscript be tied to a brick and thrown into the Thames if it came back. It did.
But the friend took it to his acquaintance Graham Greene, who was already an established author. Narayan received a telegram soon thereafter, “Novel taken. Graham Greene responsible.”
“Swami and Friends” was published in October 1935"
Narayan spent long years for his first work to be published--a truly agonizing period for a debutant writer. Persistence and self-belief are two off-shoots of Patience--'virtues' that our preceding generations possessed, something we've failed, as is evident from each spectra of our existence, to latch on to. There is a lot to learn from such great lives. Our lives, however, are governed by the transience of the moment, by instant rise and fall, by 24-hour news channels, by the urge for even faster broadband speeds, by newer airline operations, by compulsions of multi-tasking and of ostentatious lives,by preferences for magazines in place of books and for Google Chrome in place of IE(which require greater patience) by rock music (and worse--hard metal)...
I do not have a solution to provide if thats what a reader(s) of yours truly is looking for. Maybe as i chug along, I might discover, and if not, persist with intentions of the same, a solution. Till then please be Patient...
