Instant Gratification: Fending Off a Bad Habit

[Insert rant about television and computers, visual culture, lack of concentration, less reading, less patience in young people blah blah blah - not to minimize it, but just to spare you]

Today I felt impatient.

I spent a good working day searching for a place to live for the next 11 months, and it's a very different beast than I had imagined.  I spent the first three hours scanning the webs, making phone calls, and sending e-mails before it even occurred to me to get out of the house where I'm temporarily planted.  Three hours to realize that my default expectation was that apartment shopping is a computer-based activity.

(side note: this is an example of what I mean when I talk about cultural narratives - some combination of factors in our culture influenced my life to create a certain set of expectations.  The story in my head was something like: e-mail a renter, see the place, love the place, move in by Wednesday.  A benign example, but illustrative of how stories matter, and operate in complicated ways!)

Disappointed at my naivete and that I had so generously fed the i-gratification habit, I took to the streets.  I parked my car in the depths of the Bywater and spent the next two hours walking up and down, block after block, calling real-estate postings as I passed.  I felt a tinge of frustration and self-doubt, followed by another wave of self-disappointment.  Less than 24 hours in my new city and already a slip in my resolve.  Ridiculous.  He-who-laments-the-thing-becomes-the-thing.  I actually had to pause to remind myself that finding a place to live actually takes time and persistence.

And then an internal wake-up call - how removed my life is from experiences of sustained hardship: long-term unemployment, involuntary homelessness, hunger, illness, crippling debt, and many things far less serious.

As I sat with my iced latte in a chic cafe with free wifi, exhausted after two hours walking in the Louisiana sun, I took a moment to be grateful.  Grateful that I have a job, that I will probably have a place to live by September 1st, that I was able to pack my bags and move somewhere new and exciting, that I will probably find some good people in this town, that I've lived so well that one day of apartment hunting actually felt a little hard.

Goal for day two: develop a thicker skin.

A Culture of Convenience, or why I'd rather sit in traffic

note: I've removed the name of a product from this entry because this is a blog, not an advertisement.

Today I gave my mother a fresh stomach ulcer to mingle with the dozen-or-so others she's developed because of my impending move to New Orleans, Louisiana.

This one seems less severe than the "get your car inspected" ulcer, the "find a job" ulcer, and the "what neighborhood are you going to live in?" ulcer (the former two have since healed).  This one's only a "you should get an electronic toll transponder for the drive down" ulcer, but this one may linger.

For the cavemen and women who read my blog, the "transponder" is a brilliant little device that attaches to the windshield of your car and allows you to amble through toll booths without having to do the roll-down-window-while-fumbling-for-change-while-maneuvering-vehicle-through-traffic, difficult by acrobatic standards but bread-and-butter for so many NY-area commuters.

The technology is an example of my favorite kind of design: simple and incredibly useful.  It probably saves the average commuter many hours of life otherwise spent in traffic, and has saved countless millions of hair follicles from full-scale double-handed assault.  I use one regularly when I drive in my parents' car.

Having one would be a no-brainer for a daily commute to Queens or Northern Jersey, but for occasional use, I'd rather sit in traffic.  My reasoning on this one is obtuse and heady, but bear with me.

We're a culture addicted to convenience and ease.  So much industry and advertising is dedicated to making lives easier: electronic razors, restaurant delivery, e-mail, internet shopping, supermarkets.  Goods and desires are more accessible, inexpensive, and centralized than ever before.  With the right amount of equipment, money, and dedication, it is actually possible to survive without leaving bed for weeks.

I'm pointing out an extreme just to illustrate the point, but I think it's fair to say that many people live with far less inconvenience than was possible even a couple of decades ago.

Spare me the point-counterpoint here - it's obvious why in many ways this is a cultural current that most people are more than happy to ride.  But might there also be unintended and/or unfortunate consequences in a culture of convenience?  (spoiler alert: yes)  If we see less and less of the little inconveniences like traffic tolls, pharmacy trips, or snail mail (note the re-naming), how will we react to larger, less avoidable inconveniences like losing a job, breaking a leg, or the Department of Motor Vehicles?  On a cultural scale, what does it mean that we dedicate so much energy and resources to making our lives just a tad easier?

We have a choice, I think.  We can choose to see little inconveniences as purely dreadful - in some people I think this mentality actually causes extreme amounts of stress or anxiety - or we can see them as opportunities to practice a couple of important skills: patience and positive thinking.  If we train ourselves not to sweat the little things, the big things might not seem so devastatingly big.  If we can transform an hour stuck in traffic into an hour of quality conversation with a friend, maybe we can learn to see losing a job as an opportunity to find a new one that's more resonant with our passions.

Culturally speaking, a shift away from convenience, or at least a pause in the shift towards it, could open up people and resources to something more worthwhile.  I'm not going to push this point too much because the whole "worthwhile" question is a HUGE can of worms, and honestly, how often does our culture produce equitable/sustainable/healthy outcomes when we have an excess of something?  (read: corn, oil, bankers)  Still, always good to connect the personal to the cultural.

By no means am I suggesting that we shirk all convenience in the name of personal growth or some ethereal notion of cultural enlightenment.  We've all been trained to expect some level of comfort for most of our lives and un-doing that training would be a huge pain and probably a pointless one.  Becoming some kind of primitivist might help someone learn patience, but it might also make that someone come off as preachy or out of touch.  A person won't become an example of positive thinking if nobody is willing to bear witness.  One might find it enjoyable to live with fewer and fewer conveniences, but I think it's better to do such things out of actual gratification rather than stoic principle - joy is far more contagious than stubborn self-restraint.

Much gratitude for reading my elaborate rationalization on why I'm taking a pass on ease (you see what I did there, right?).  In the depths of my skull somewhere my unconscious is laughing maniacally because it knows that, in truth, I just can't be inconvenienced to drive all the way to Nyack to get a damn toll transponder.  No wonder I give my mother ulcers.

Re-writing the Narrative

Putting the cart well before the horse, I hope this blog will be: a combination of storytelling and cultural criticism; deeply unsettling yet hopeful; thoughtful and mildly entertaining; fodder for frustration and food for thought.


Here's a few themes that I hope carry throughout:

• That as people and as a culture, we have huge untapped potential to be happier, more peaceful, more generous, more compassionate, more nuanced, and more responsible
• That many of the ways we behave and act as people and as a culture are related to stories, implicit and explicit, that we learn through media, conversation, and lived experience, and that operate on us constantly in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend
• That by being self-reflective and culturally-critical, and by telling different kinds of stories, those based on the values that we wish to embody, we can begin to shift our lives and our culture
• That we have far more power to transform our world and our lives than we think, that we don't need a degree, a change in career or more money to do it, but that it will require risk, deliberation, and humility

My hope beyond hope for this blog is that it will shift, in some miniscule way, readers' perception of the world.  This is, in part, why I've chosen the title "Re-writing the Narrative."**  I want this blog to tell a story: not about how the world is, but rather about how we might choose to see the world.

I hope it compels you.

Much gratitude for your attention,

Sam

**"Re-writing the Narrative" is also the title of my senior thesis, a story about the first month of an 11-week road trip I took in the summer of 2010 to visit a number of community-based organizations around the US and Canada.  Happy to share upon request.