I'm searching for modern happiness in 2015. That retro, old-fashioned kind simply takes just far too long. That sort of happiness requires patience and I don't want to wait for it. I want upgraded happiness. I want beta release patch 4.02, the "new and improved" version. This is meant to be the 21st century, the era of hot and cold running digital television and remote controlled bathwater and I demand instant gratification.
Once upon a neanderthalithic time, when men were [hairy] men and deer and sheep were worried, you had to wait to eat your meal. Even when the Mammoth Burger walk-through was open, they offered only self-kill meals. And when you brought them home, you still had to ask Mrs Neanderthal to get the fire started.
"What ?? Mammoth burger AGAIN ?? How you cook ??"
"Ugh. Start fire for cave lady."
"Hah. You probably burn cave down."
"Hah you. No can burn cave down. Buy insurance policy."
"How you start fire ??"
"Rub twigs together. Make big flame. Cook mammoth burger."
"Last time you burn fingers."
The thing is, nobody lights a fire these days. People don't even light their ovens anymore. It takes just too long to heat up a meal. It takes just too much patience. I'm hungry now, not 40 minutes from now. That's why God gave us microwave ovens. Just pop the food in and … whrrrrr … BEEP … out it comes, nicely warmed for immediate consumption. That's how I want my happiness … toasty warm and right now !!
"Ooh. No more burn fingers."
Consider the Internet. You type "electric toothbrushes". You hit "enter". Google responds: "Search took 1.02 seconds." You think "Google is ready for the geriatric ward". You click on the first result – something about an electric eel eating a balanced breakfast – and a blank screen appears. You wait. And then wait some more.
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TRIVIA QUESTION:
Did you know that William Shakespeare once waited almost twenty seconds for a web site to appear, so he could find a word that rhymed with cardiologist ?? The web site finally appeared in 1997, but he had given up waiting by then.
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Five seconds pass. Time's up and still no site has appeared. Your instant gratification cells are offended. You surf to another site.
"Ugh. No get Mammoth Burger web site. This thing no work." Go to Mammoth Burger walk-through instead".
I don't want to walk to get happiness. I want it delivered now. Not twenty seconds later, even if it does rhyme with cardiologist. Not 1.02 seconds later. I want happiness NOW. Remember when you had to extract your posterior from the couch to change TV channels ?? That took such a monumental effort that most people sat through whole nights of television without bothering to change channels at all. Of course, that might have been because the other channel was playing Columbo.
Back in the four-channel universe there was always something on. Now we flip through 5,472 channels, which keep us busy while fishing for something worth watching. Thanks to the remote control, we can now flip channels at a relaxed pace of 15 to 20 per minute without even breaking into a sweat. It’s also pretty much the same when you buy your fruit and veg these days. No more popping down to Fred the Greengrocer, then over the road to Keith the Butcher followed by a wander up to Mike the Chemists, it’s all available under one roof at Morrison’s.
Last week I had to pick some up extra sundries and ended up asking a question that I’ve never previously asked before in my entire life … "Where are your bananas ??". It seemed like a logical question to ask. For all of my thirty-three trips around the sun, bananas were a key item to place in the shopping trolley. For the first time I could recall, the banana basket was empty. So I asked a store worker where the bananas were.
"We don't have any," he replied. "We'll be getting some in tomorrow." It took me a few moments to absorb this information.
"What do you mean, you don't have any bananas ??" I thought. "Every store has bananas." True, sometimes they are green enough to pass for bent cucumbers and they occasionally appear to have lost an arm-wrestling match with a watermelon. But there are ALWAYS bananas of SOME sort in the store … aren’t there ?? And this was where it struck me. We expect our machines each day to break yesterday's speed record. Our cars seem to be slowing to a crawl because more and more people are squeezing onto the same bit of road space trying to go faster and honking their horns louder (because we all know that cars move faster when their horns get honked LONG and LOUD, right ??).
And I expect bananas on the supermarket shelf even when it is snowing outside and they’re still hanging on a tree somewhere in Barbados. Happiness, though, is not like a microwave oven. Nor like the Internet. Not even like a remote control. Happiness does not run on the instant gratification system. Happiness takes time and patience.
Dear Lord, please grant me the patience I lack … and I want it right now !!