Instant Gratification…
By JP...
Ok, before we get back to the law school myths, with parts on the Socratic Method, law school socializing, the day of the average law student, professors and the ivory tower, Grades, backstabbing and law school and finally wrapping it up with a retrospective of what I actually learned in law school, I want to do something a bit different right now. By the way, if there is anything you want me to cover or have questions on, just leave it in a comment and I will do it. But for now, I want to cover another topic - The idea of instant gratification.
When I was in high school, we were subjected every year to the kids on the speech team doing there little oratories in front of the whole school. For the most part, it sounded like a bunch of guys trying out for “It’s Raining Men-the Musical.” But one time, this kid gave a speech about the land of instant milk and honey. The basic gist being, that in our day and age, we all want instant results. Products are guaranteed to make you lose 10 lbs in 3 days. Cold medication will have you feeling better within hours. There are lots of products out there aimed at getting people who are unhappy about some aspects of their lives a quick and easy fix. People have even come up with this concept of speed dating, where if you are lonely, you can go on a date with 20 different girls in an hour. You go from table to table for 3 minutes, meeting a different girl, and at the end of the night, you get to check off a box saying whether or not you want to date them again.
With all these concepts of quicker, faster ways to make you happy, what it has really done is create an environment where everyone is impatient. Now I would love to sit here and make fun of all those impatient people, saying how Rome wasn’t built in a day, or how all good things come to those who wait, or whatever other BS I have heard through the years. But the fact of the matter is I am just as impatient as the next guy. I want results fast, quick and with as little pain as possible.
When I get sick, I will down a whole bottle of Nyquil, thinking that within one night, I can rid myself of a fever or a really bad sore throat. If I like a girl, I can’t wait for nature to take its course, I am on it like Michael Jackson at a nursery school. If I have weight to lose, I don’t follow the slow and steady diet; I try and lose as much weight as possible without killing myself. The problem is, when I don’t get over my illness, or when the girl doesn’t come knocking down my door and profess her devotion to me, or if I don’t look like Arnold Schwartznegger in Commando after 2 weeks of hitting the gym, I get discouraged. I give up. I crawl back into my cave, and write a post for this website.
What this all comes down to is, that like most people, I don’t think Galileo or Copernicus got it right, or whomever said the world revolves around the sun. I have become convinced this world revolves around me. If someone acts in a way that pisses me off, I am convinced it’s because they did it to spite me. If everyone around me is sick, I know that everything is okay, as long as I don’t get sick. It is a pretty egotistical way to look at the world, except I find that everyone seems to look at the world in the same way. The problem becomes then - if we have 6 billion people thinking they are the true center of the universe - that means 599,999,999,999 people are wrong. I have a tough time grasping the concept that I really am not the person that means most here. While all men are created equal, don’t try and tell me that you don’t think God gave you just a little more to make you extra special.
I don’t even know where this ego came from. I was not the type of kid whose parents sang their praises to everyone in earshot. My teachers growing up thought I was bright, but I was never the standout superstar kid who got Student of the Month every damn time around. I was not particularly a great athlete as a kid, I played a lot of baseball, but I was never heralded as the next Babe Ruth. Even as life progressed, I was never valedictorian, or the kid who won the science fair. Yet I still think that in some way, this world revolves around me.
This isn’t some self-loathing piece; don’t think good ole JP is sitting here with a bottle of scotch and sleeping pills wondering how he got this way. But the only way I can understand why we all feel we are entitled to something more, why we deserve the instant gratification is by looking at myself. Don’t get me wrong, as I sit here, hungry, wasting time when I need to be working on a paper, I wonder why I can’t just clap my hands, have some beautiful girl come here with a nice dish of penne arriabiata, while she types up my paper so I can watch cartoons. The thing is, if someone else told me that, I would think they were self-absorbed and a jerk. When I think it, it makes perfect sense that I deserve that luxury. Maybe in the end, what it comes down to is not that we live in a world of instant gratification and me-first, instead, we live in a world where everyone just hasn’t realized that besides G-d, they are putting the wrong person second. Everyone, no matter if they are married with kids, or are the pope, should put G-d first, and me second. Once the world works on pleasing me, then everything else, is just gravy.
Ok, before we get back to the law school myths, with parts on the Socratic Method, law school socializing, the day of the average law student, professors and the ivory tower, Grades, backstabbing and law school and finally wrapping it up with a retrospective of what I actually learned in law school, I want to do something a bit different right now. By the way, if there is anything you want me to cover or have questions on, just leave it in a comment and I will do it. But for now, I want to cover another topic - The idea of instant gratification.
When I was in high school, we were subjected every year to the kids on the speech team doing there little oratories in front of the whole school. For the most part, it sounded like a bunch of guys trying out for “It’s Raining Men-the Musical.” But one time, this kid gave a speech about the land of instant milk and honey. The basic gist being, that in our day and age, we all want instant results. Products are guaranteed to make you lose 10 lbs in 3 days. Cold medication will have you feeling better within hours. There are lots of products out there aimed at getting people who are unhappy about some aspects of their lives a quick and easy fix. People have even come up with this concept of speed dating, where if you are lonely, you can go on a date with 20 different girls in an hour. You go from table to table for 3 minutes, meeting a different girl, and at the end of the night, you get to check off a box saying whether or not you want to date them again.
With all these concepts of quicker, faster ways to make you happy, what it has really done is create an environment where everyone is impatient. Now I would love to sit here and make fun of all those impatient people, saying how Rome wasn’t built in a day, or how all good things come to those who wait, or whatever other BS I have heard through the years. But the fact of the matter is I am just as impatient as the next guy. I want results fast, quick and with as little pain as possible.
When I get sick, I will down a whole bottle of Nyquil, thinking that within one night, I can rid myself of a fever or a really bad sore throat. If I like a girl, I can’t wait for nature to take its course, I am on it like Michael Jackson at a nursery school. If I have weight to lose, I don’t follow the slow and steady diet; I try and lose as much weight as possible without killing myself. The problem is, when I don’t get over my illness, or when the girl doesn’t come knocking down my door and profess her devotion to me, or if I don’t look like Arnold Schwartznegger in Commando after 2 weeks of hitting the gym, I get discouraged. I give up. I crawl back into my cave, and write a post for this website.
What this all comes down to is, that like most people, I don’t think Galileo or Copernicus got it right, or whomever said the world revolves around the sun. I have become convinced this world revolves around me. If someone acts in a way that pisses me off, I am convinced it’s because they did it to spite me. If everyone around me is sick, I know that everything is okay, as long as I don’t get sick. It is a pretty egotistical way to look at the world, except I find that everyone seems to look at the world in the same way. The problem becomes then - if we have 6 billion people thinking they are the true center of the universe - that means 599,999,999,999 people are wrong. I have a tough time grasping the concept that I really am not the person that means most here. While all men are created equal, don’t try and tell me that you don’t think God gave you just a little more to make you extra special.
I don’t even know where this ego came from. I was not the type of kid whose parents sang their praises to everyone in earshot. My teachers growing up thought I was bright, but I was never the standout superstar kid who got Student of the Month every damn time around. I was not particularly a great athlete as a kid, I played a lot of baseball, but I was never heralded as the next Babe Ruth. Even as life progressed, I was never valedictorian, or the kid who won the science fair. Yet I still think that in some way, this world revolves around me.
This isn’t some self-loathing piece; don’t think good ole JP is sitting here with a bottle of scotch and sleeping pills wondering how he got this way. But the only way I can understand why we all feel we are entitled to something more, why we deserve the instant gratification is by looking at myself. Don’t get me wrong, as I sit here, hungry, wasting time when I need to be working on a paper, I wonder why I can’t just clap my hands, have some beautiful girl come here with a nice dish of penne arriabiata, while she types up my paper so I can watch cartoons. The thing is, if someone else told me that, I would think they were self-absorbed and a jerk. When I think it, it makes perfect sense that I deserve that luxury. Maybe in the end, what it comes down to is not that we live in a world of instant gratification and me-first, instead, we live in a world where everyone just hasn’t realized that besides G-d, they are putting the wrong person second. Everyone, no matter if they are married with kids, or are the pope, should put G-d first, and me second. Once the world works on pleasing me, then everything else, is just gravy.
posted by EDS | 11:25 PM
1 Comments:
Sorry about the length of the post. I started writing and it became somewhat lengthy.
I just want to congratulate EDS and JP on becoming one more item on my list of things to do in class instead of paying attention. This list has been growing longer and longer throughout law school. At this point, I don’t have enough time during class to complete everything. I will probably have to stop going to class altogether. As JP pointed out, the first day is the most important anyway – when you look around and find out whose notes your going to get.
I have two points. First, on the subject of instant gratification and impatience: The root cause of the need for instant gratification is the remote control. For thousands of years, humans were forced to follow the general rule of – if you want something quicker, you must work faster, which usually meant working harder. The lazier you were, the longer it took to get what you want, the more patient you were forced to be. Then the remote was invented. The remote was ingenious. Now people can get the joy of laziness without the need to be patient.
I am not trying to be critical of the remote. I think it ranks up there with the wheel, indoor plumbing and pizza as one of the greatest inventions ever. The remote is one of those little things you never appreciate until its gone. Last week, I fell asleep watching the Daily Show. I woke up in the morning to the sound of infomercials. Although Ron Popeil was making a compelling argument for purchasing a flavor injector (which, for those unfamiliar with it, is a giant syringe used to ram various marinades into poultry), it was very important to switch to ESPN, but the remote was nowhere to be found. [Maybe this can be addressed in a later post – how many people have the irrational habit of watching Sportscenter at night and then again in the morning? Although a major sports story almost never breaks between midnight and 8AM, I always make sure to catch that morning show, just in case.] Now I was torn. I had two little devils standing on my shoulder. My laziness was telling me to stay in bed - its Comedy Central eventually something funny will come on. My impatience said find the remote and change the channel. In the end, my laziness won and I watched the entire infomercial. That morning I learned an important lesson about patience and, more importantly, flavor injecting.
Second, on the topic of people that annoy me: There is one driving habit that gets me more pissed than being cut off – People who take the HOV lane and drive slower than the people in the regular lanes. I think environmentalists should picket their homes. They are destroying the entire carpool movement. Although I have never actively sought to change my car from a low occupancy vehicle, or LOV, to a HOV, I still expect to get the benefit when I happen to have a passenger. (I rightfully should, as the world revolves around me.) The concept is simple - HOV lanes don’t work unless they are faster than the other lanes. There is nothing more frustrating than getting stuck behind some schmuck in the HOV lane (which always happens right after you pass one of those “no exit for 30 miles” signs).
These people are impervious to any signals that they are driving too slow. Honking, flashing your brights and tailgating only causes these people to slow down. These people are morons. If we are going to make differential lanes, morons should have their own lane. There should be a lane for people who cannot figure out the concept of driving. A separate lane for people who drive well. Finally, there should be a third lane reserved for myself and Jeff Gordon.
Until that happens, I will have to avoid the HOV lane, or spend countless hours cruising at 35 mph behind some old man (and his dog, which he counts as a passenger) wishing I could stab him with my flavor injector. If I only had some sort of James Bond car with missiles, so I could blow up the evil old man and his little dog too. Of course, James Bond never had to resort to these measures because he only drives on special European roads, which only allow James Bond, evil geniuses, hot women in sports cars and, for some reason, haycarts.
--General R. Blie
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