
I like to inconvenience myself.
From radio to Spotify premium, leftovers to Uber Eats, printing out Google maps to Siri announcing directions—everything we want is now at the tip of our fingers, and I’m not convinced it’s good for us.
Humanity—or at least the Global North—has long shown signs of mass entitlement. Take colonialism, expansionism, space exploration, and strangers’ behaviour on the internet as a few examples. The last thing we need to encourage is greater self-importance.
Sigmund Freud—who did have a lot of insights despite the mom stuff—theorized infants don’t initially realize their own separation from or lack of control over the external world. According to Freud, because of the immediacy with which their every need is met at the beginning of their lives, infants believe themselves to be the whole world and everything else to be an extension of them. Contemporary research corroborates Freud’s theory. Young children can’t recognize themselves in a mirror until they’re approximately two years old.
Our modern conveniences seem to encourage a similar misperception of our own omnipotence.
I often horrify people with the news that I don’t have Spotify premium. I like hearing ads. To me, it’s a welcome reminder to be patient and I shouldn’t always expect to get what I want. Even if the light ahead of me is green, the car who got there first gets to go through it before I do. Such is the way of life and physics.
My patience sitting through an ad, or a traffic light, extends to all my thinking.
Faced with a challenging theory in class, I employ the practice of centering myself to focus my attention and efforts enough to work through it. Because of the discomfort it often requires, I believe patience and inconvenience to be crucial to critical thinking. Particularly given today’s political and media landscapes, the importance of critical thinking can’t be overestimated. I want to give my brain every opportunity to keep that system active.
At the risk of sounding too self-congratulatory, I fear patience is a dying trait. Our need for instantaneousness is so great some of us are now implanting brain chips because the walk to a laptop is too long a pause from serving ourselves.
Let’s not forget, indulging in instant gratification is linked to lower achievement, higher debt, risky sex and substance abuse behaviours, and greater difficulties with mental health.
Daily life is overflowing with stimuli and rapid motion. The relentless and pounding rhythm of it all makes it very easy to forget everybody is navigating the same beats. Though I like to think we’re all connected, none of us are extensions of each other.
Being comfortable with some discomfort encourages the humility necessary to find empathy. Hearing an ad reminds me I can’t always have what I want, so I’m not so affronted by finding the wrong takeout order in my bag that I take it out on an innocent delivery driver.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with making use of modern conveniences. I don’t think having Spotify premium makes you a Freudian baby.
But, for yourself and the world around you, get a little uncomfortable and practice a little patience.
Cassandra is a fourth-year English student and The Journal’s Editorials Editor.
Tags
modern convenience, Technology, Tradition
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