Why We Struggle to Wait: The Surprising Side Effect of Modern Progress

Progress has brought humanity countless blessings. Technology has made life easier, faster, and more comfortable than ever before. Yet alongside all the wonderful advantages it has given us, progress has also created a number of unintended drawbacks.

Modern people have become accustomed to convenience. Everything comes easily. In the past, if someone wanted to travel from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, he might have had to embark on an exhausting three-day journey by donkey. Today, the same trip can be completed with a comfortable fifty-minute drive.

Similarly, if someone once wished to communicate with a friend living across the ocean, he would need to write a letter and wait weeks for it to arrive, hoping it reached its destination at all. Today, all it takes is pulling a smartphone from a pocket, making a call, sending a text message, or firing off an email that arrives within seconds.

Even preparing food has changed dramatically. In earlier generations, eating chicken for lunch required taking a chicken to a ritual slaughterer, plucking the feathers, salting, cleaning, and preparing it. Today, one simply buys a frozen chicken at the supermarket and cooks it. And if even that feels like too much effort, a ready-made meal can be pulled from the freezer and heated in the microwave for thirty seconds.

This way of life trains people to become passive and dependent on convenience. We receive extraordinary things with very little effort, and if something does not suit our tastes perfectly, we immediately begin to complain. Yet beyond encouraging laziness, this lifestyle creates another problem that may be even more serious: impatience.

The Thirty-Second Mindset

In the past, many things simply took time. People needed to wait. They learned patience, self-control, and emotional resilience. They understood that worthwhile things often required perseverance.

Today, everything happens at breathtaking speed. Messages arrive instantly, information is available at the click of a button, and food can be prepared in moments. A person raised in the age of smartphones, the internet, and microwaves, often struggles to wait more than thirty seconds.

What happens when life presents us with processes that cannot be rushed? What happens when growth, healing, success, or change require time to develop?

Modern people often find this incredibly difficult. We become frustrated, irritated, disappointed, and angry. We start complaining and looking for someone to blame. It is hard for us to accept that not everything in life operates at microwave speed.

Some Things Take Time

Consider parenting, for example. Raising children is not something that happens overnight. It requires years of investment, daily nurturing, patience, and dedication. As much as many of us might wish otherwise, we still cannot place a child in a microwave, enter the correct code, and watch him emerge thirty seconds later as a mature, responsible, and well-educated adult. It simply does not work that way.

The same is true of relationships. Deep and healthy connections between people require time and effort. A strong marriage is not built in a single moment. It demands emotional investment, listening, support, encouragement, and mutual growth. Someone who wants immediate results, or someone who lacks the patience to invest in the process, will find it difficult to build deep and meaningful relationships with a spouse, family members, or friends.

Personal growth is no different. Developing one's character and refining one's traits requires time and effort. Jealousy, pride, and greed do not disappear overnight. Likewise, cultivating generosity, humility, diligence, gratitude, and inner joy demands ongoing work and commitment.

The question is: do we have the patience to invest in these processes?

Redemption Is Also a Process

Even the redemption of the Jewish people is described by our Sages as a gradual process. They taught that “the redemption of Israel comes little by little.” They warned us that the journey would include difficulties, setbacks, and periods of struggle.

Yet when those challenges appear in real life, we often forget what we have been taught.

After two thousand years of exile, the Jewish people merited returning to their homeland. Many believed that redemption was just around the corner and that everything would soon fall into place. Yet decades have passed, and reality remains complex. There are still wars, terrorist attacks, crises, and challenges. There are still problems that require patience, wisdom, and perseverance.

Not everything is resolved overnight.

Yet many people fail to understand this. They lose patience, become discouraged, complain, grow angry, and begin assigning blame.

Did anyone ever promise that within five minutes — or even fifty years, everything would unfold exactly according to our expectations and imagination?

The Lesson of Tu Bishvat

It is no coincidence that redemption is often compared to a plant. Every day in our prayers we say, “Cause the branch of David, Your servant, to flourish speedily.” There is much we can learn from a simple plant, from a tiny seed that breaks through the darkness of the earth and slowly but surely makes its way upward.

A plant does not carry a stopwatch. It does not try to accomplish everything instantly. It is not constantly preoccupied with questions such as, “What will happen?” “When will this finally be over?” or “Why aren’t others doing their jobs properly?”

Its focus is remarkably simple. 

It wants to grow. 

Patiently and steadily, it advances one stage at a time. It continues climbing upward and refuses to give up. If a fierce storm threatens to uproot it, it bends low and clings tightly to its roots until the storm passes. When rain falls from above, it eagerly absorbs every drop and uses it for a single purpose: growth.

It does not waste energy on calculations, complaints, or worries. It simply continues growing, calmly and patiently.

Listening to Nature

Perhaps this Tu Bishvat, the New Year of the Trees, we should try to do the same.

Perhaps we should step outside into nature, breathe deeply, absorb the scents around us, and take a moment to observe and listen. Let us look at a small flower, gently touch its leaves, and listen to the lesson it has to teach.

It may remind us that meaningful growth takes time. It may teach us that patience is not weakness but strength. And it may help us remember that the most important things in life, such as raising children, building relationships, refining our character, and even redemption itself, cannot be rushed.

Like the seed beneath the soil, we are called to keep growing, one step at a time.

Adapted from Aish.com.