It takes time!
Patience is a virtue that few people posses in this age and time. Needless to say, it is one of the most important in the list of virtues. One famous person claimed that this is an “instant-gratification” generation whereby people do not want to work or wait for anything. We want everything here and now, and the famous YOLO motto only serves to reinforce that fact. “You Only Live Once” everyone says, and so grab all you want, have all the fun you can get regardless of the consequences.
Every corner of the world is advertising that: the media, the social networks, the art, etc. all you hear about is “get what you want and get it now”. It is not uncommon to see upcoming musicians shooting videos beside big mansions and inside big expensive cars that they can only own in their dreams, while in reality most of these can hardly afford to board a taxi; you find them by the roadsides as they try to force people to buy their CDs! The irony of it all!
It is a paradox really, to see how we are enticed to work less but to own more! The quality of hard work seems to have disappeared as everyone wants to grab the biggest chunk of the economy by just sitting down and doing nothing. This, in turn, leads to all the evils we hear off in our societies: theft, robbery, embezzlement, corruption, prostitution, you name it.
Moreover, the pop culture is bombarding us with the wrong information in every sphere of life. We forget that not everyone can be popular, or that rich without working really hard. We forget that every good thing needs a bit (or a lot) of work, from our relationships, to our finances.
Apparently we live in a “smart” world! We can get things din in a much faster and easier way, and unlike our forefathers, we can do more in a shorter time. That doesn’t mean we should do less; given the abilities we have, we should be able to achieve much more. From instant coffee, instant information (from the internet), instant messaging (we wait for the post office no more), instant communication, to instant lunches and dinners, we are left with so much time in our hands, and we can use it constructively because contrary to popular belief, there are still many facets of the human life that are not “instant”, and they need hard work and patience.
A teacher once told me “do not expect to achieve in three years, what I have achieved in forty years of work and toil” and he was talking about material things.
Develop the spirit of hard work, and at the same time let build your life step by step. It is bad to covet the things of others, but you can admire them and take your time to reach where they have reached, in a legal way.
