I want patience NOW!

We live in a society of NOW. We want to watch a full TV series NOW, buy a new phone NOW, go on holiday NOW, buy a new car NOW. Everything is NOW, NOW, NOW. Why? Because technology has enabled us to see things in real time and we don’t want to wait for anything. We are very much becoming an impatient society.

Here comes the ‘when I was young’ paragraph…as a child if you wanted something you would spend a lifetime saving up your pocket money to buy it. Sometimes if you wanted something badly enough you would take the time to get the money together before going to the shops and buying the toy/trinket/clothes/etc. Other times, clearly it was a passing phase and you would give up and move onto something else and go through the cycle again and again.

In a way, saving up for something and giving up before you reached your target was a good thing. It made you realise the ‘must have item’ was a passing phase and it didn’t mean as much to you as you first thought. It taught me patience…or tried to teach me it. I struggled as I wanted to buy so much as a child, but my pocket money just wouldn’t stretch. My sister on the other hand was very good with her money and could save up easily to buy what she wanted. She was patient and also not as fickle as I was so when she set her mind on something she would save, save, save and get it. In this time, I had probably gone through five things I really really needed!

I haven’t changed much since then, except I no longer get pocket money (:-)) but I still go through phases of must haves and wants where I am soooo excited and need to get something and then a few weeks later I have moved on. Sometimes I buy the object of my dreams and other times I put it in my Amazon basket or other basket and it sits there for weeks before I delete it.

We do live in an era of everything being available to us now and we just don’t want to wait for anything. Is this why trends change so quickly now? We want things now, we get them, use them and then get bored just as quickly and move on to the next.

If you are like me, then you know the hardship of having patience and waiting…..it can be super hard. My husband is really good at not buying things NOW which is why shopping with him can be a nightmare. We go to Next or somewhere and he goes to look at clothes and so do I and then we meet up, he will have a lot of things he wants. But then heading to the checkout, he then say’s ‘oh I don’t need them really’ and then proceeds to put some if not everything back on the racks! It is frustrating. I just have no patience, particularly if I have gone to the trouble to physically go to a shop rather than sitting on my bum and ordering online.

I am trying to be more patient when it comes to spending money, I’m certainly not rich, but any disposable income I have is threatened with being spent on something, that in a year’s time will be relegated to the bottom shelf, charity box or somewhere in a cupboard. The thing is I am not a materialistic person which I know this sounds like I am, but I genuinely believe the item I am buying is going to help me in someway, whether it is a kitchen appliance or some super amazing vegetable chopper, or a book. I don’t buy clothes often and tend to wear my clothes till the bitter end of their life….this is where my money should be spent.

I am impatient with how little time we live, there is not enough time in the world for me to learn and know about the things I want to. I do love learning so quite often buy books to help expand my knowledge. I wish I could know everything NOW, I wish there was a way to absorb knowledge and just find out everything super fast about the topics at the top of my list. Yes, I want to know things that in a weeks time I will have moved on from. But surely being impatient for knowledge is not a bad thing? We can’t know everything. It would be impossible to do this. Sometimes you have to find a pathway to knowledge, you have to work for it, go through a journey and possibly pain to get the knowledge we need. There is no fast track to do this.

I need to learn to focus on this, to not rush to know everything. To stop being impatient and enjoy the journey of the knowledge I am currently in the throws of acquiring. Time is ticking but learning is an adventure and patience has to be a part of it, impatience doesn’t help as you end up frustrated and annoyed.

What advice can I give you about patience? Well, don’t become so stuck on wanting to know or have everything NOW that it becomes your soul focus. Enjoy each day, each adventure and the knowledge or items you collect, but more importantly enjoy the time it takes you to acquire the knowledge or the item you want, have that patience and relish the end result.

Take care and have a great week.

Look after you.

Love Emma 😄

xx