We live in such an “instant” society.
Want to talk to your friend? Call her! Not home? Call her cell phone, which should, of course, be turned on, charged up, and on her person at every moment of the day.
Hungry? Forget about making beans or stew that takes a couple of hours to cook, just run down to the McDonald’s! Drive thru open 25 hours a day!
In the mood for love? Takes too long to build a lasting relationship and put all things in the proper order, so just hop online and find someone compatible with your tastes who is willing to sleep with you, and there you go!
We buy instant coffee and instant potatoes, and when we’re still too lazy or in a hurry for that, we go for the fast food. We turn on the heat and seconds later feel warmth. We get cranky when we can’t get a hold of someone on their cell any time of day or night, and information is at our fingertips constantly through the internet. Diet not working? Go grab a bottle of pills!
Patience is no longer a virtue in our world today. Patience is equated with stupidity. Being so is seen as letting ourselves fall a step behind our peers, behind the times.
There is very little in our lives today that prepares our children for learning patience. There is nothing to train us in that virtue unless we choose it, or unless God hands it to us. Even then we have to choose to accept it, to still go in the order God ordained for us and not get our lives out of order because we are impatient.
Planning and patience. Two things I strive to do better at every day.
I kind of got sidetracked from where I was going with this, but that’s okay. I was going to talk about my mom again. Seems everything kinda goes back around to her. Anyway, the thing is, she wants to be able to get in touch with me at all times, and calls me every day. If I don’t answer her calls or call her back and three whole days go by, she’s calling in the cavalry. She calls around to my in-laws, trying to find out if I’m stuck in a hospital somewhere, or worse. I can’t decide if she genuinely thinks I’m injured, or if that’s just an excuse to give me guilt about not talking to her. She does genuinely have an unreasonable fear of death and dying, and not being able to say goodbye to those she loves. I’ve dealt with that fear all my life and I’m generally used to it, but sometimes it just seems so completely unlikely that she could believe that if I were dead or dying in a hospital that no one would bother to call her for 3 days. That’s beyond unreasonable, especially when you consider my in-laws are very intelligent, diligent people who would not neglect to call my mother in such an event, even if they do have whatever ill feelings toward her that she thinks they do.
Wow, I hope that makes sense because I am so not going back and rewriting it.
So, I really don’t mind the talking to me every singe day part, most of the time. It’s just that the daily phone call always goes upwards of an hour. Although, she has kind of learned that weekends are off-limits. Don’t expect me to answer, because I usually won’t, and I’ll call her back first thing Monday morning to catch up on all the goings-on. I’m spending time with my husband and family on the weekends, and they come first.
All the rest of the days of the week, however, belong to my mother. At least an hour on the phone, just about every day. If I sound disinterested, trying to wind down the conversation, she gets offended. If I tell her I’ve got to run, but don’t have a good reason, she gets offended. If I try to limit how often we talk or for how long, she gets offended. She’s gotten worse since Josh’s surgery. I think she felt horribly guilty for having to leave the next day, for not staying longer when “I needed her most”. I don’t know, I think I would have ended up just having another person needing support from me and I had no extra to give at that time. It was better they left when they did. But there’s no convincing her of that.
She is a guilt driven person, and in reality, so am I. I just fight it harder than she does. That’s not how I want to live my life. And the truth of it is, when I get off the phone with her after our daily gab, I feel drained. I feel frustrated at the things I didn’t get done, at the things I could have been doing with my kids, and I have no energy to spend on conversations with the other people in my life. Letting her have that space of my time every day has strangled other important relationships because it is so emotionally draining. I have let slide numerous other friendships because of this. That’s a sad fact, and one that I need to face and deal with.
Even 20 years ago we would have only had one conversation a week, and sometimes not even that, because any more would be so impractical! 50 years ago we would have spoken maybe once a month, and written letters once a week. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in instantizing ourselves to the point of being ridiculous. We need some perspective.
Confessions from the Rockin' Chair 