The Trouble With Fast
An essay by Chad Schomber
A few weeks ago I watched a man get irritated waiting for a cup of coffee.
Not a dramatic kind of irritated. Nothing worthy of a viral video.
Just the modern version.
The sigh.
The phone check.
The glance toward the counter that says, You gotta be kidding me.
There were three people ahead of him.
Three.
The whole ordeal couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds.
And yet there he stood, trapped in what appeared to be the longest hostage situation of his life.
I laughed to myself, mostly because I’ve been that guy.
You probably have too.
We’ve all become a little strange around time.
We can order dinner from a couch. Summon a ride from a parking lot. Watch any movie ever made before we’ve even decided what mood we’re in. A package can leave a warehouse hundreds of miles away and show up on our porch before we remember ordering it.
We’ve spent decades turning life into a giant microwave.
Heat.
Ding.
Done.
Which is great for burritos.
Not so great for expectations.
Because somewhere along the way we started staring at oak trees like they were broken microwaves.
We start a business.
Two months later we tap the glass.
Hello? Is this thing working?
We hit the gym for three weeks.
Tap.
Learn a skill for six months.
Tap.
Work on a marriage for a year.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Meanwhile the oak tree is just doing oak tree stuff, completely unimpressed by our timetable.
That’s the funny thing about reality.
Technology gets faster every year.
Reality doesn’t.
An oak tree still grows at oak tree speed.
Trust grows at trust speed.
Mastery grows at mastery speed.
Love grows at love speed.
Reality never agreed to overnight shipping.
The strange part is that we’ve never had more access to gratification, yet a lot of people seem less satisfied than ever.
Maybe that’s because gratification and satisfaction aren’t the same thing.
They look similar from a distance.
Kind of like cousins at a family reunion.
But spend enough time with them and the differences become obvious.
Gratification arrives fast.
A notification.
A purchase.
A scroll.
A like.
A little spark of pleasure that shows up quickly and leaves just as quickly.
Satisfaction takes the scenic route.
It’s built from early mornings nobody saw.
Awkward first attempts.
Boring repetitions.
Small decisions that don’t feel important until years later.
One is a spark.
The other is a campfire.
A spark is exciting.
A campfire keeps you warm through the night.
We’ve gotten very good at collecting sparks.
Sometimes at the expense of building fires.
I think about that whenever I see people talk about patience as if it’s some kind of moral achievement.
Patience isn’t really the point.
Understanding is.
If I plant a tomato seed today and get angry tomorrow because I don’t have tomatoes, the issue isn’t patience.
The issue is that I’ve misunderstood how tomatoes work.
The same thing happens all over life.
We expect confidence after one brave conversation.
Financial freedom after a few good decisions.
A meaningful relationship after a handful of dates.
We expect harvests during planting season.
Then we call ourselves failures when the fruit isn’t hanging from the branches yet.
That’s a rough way to live.
It’s like bringing a stopwatch to a sunset.
The sunset doesn’t care.
It unfolds at its own pace.
Every time.
A friend once told me something I’ll never forget.
He said most people quit when nothing appears to be happening.
The problem is that nearly everything important spends a long time looking like nothing.
Roots look like nothing.
Practice looks like nothing.
Saving money looks like nothing.
Reading books looks like nothing.
A marriage built on thousands of ordinary conversations looks like nothing.
Until one day it doesn’t.
Then everyone points to the visible result.
The successful business.
The healthy body.
The deep relationship.
The calm confidence.
The sturdy life.
What they don’t see are the months or years when all the growth was happening underground.
We’ve become so accustomed to fast rewards that slow progress sometimes feels like failure.
That’s the trap.
Not that things take time.
That we’ve started treating time itself as evidence something is wrong.
The world doesn’t help.
Every screen around us behaves like a casino designed by engineers.
Everything flashes.
Everything buzzes.
Everything asks for attention.
Pull this lever.
Click this button.
Refresh this feed.
Something new is always waiting.
A tomato plant has terrible marketing.
So does wisdom.
So does commitment.
So does craftsmanship.
The most important parts of life rarely flash.
They just sit quietly in the corner doing their work.
Maybe that’s why they’re easy to miss.
The older I get, the more I suspect the goal isn’t to reject convenience.
I like convenience.
I enjoy hot coffee, fast internet, and groceries that appear without me having to wander through twelve aisles looking for mustard.
This isn’t a speech about going backward.
It’s a reminder that some parts of life obey the laws of technology and some parts obey the laws of nature.
Technology gets faster.
Nature doesn’t.
Nature is in no hurry whatsoever.
And somehow it still gets everything done.
Maybe that’s the lesson.
Not to become more patient.
Not to become more disciplined.
Just to stop expecting oak trees to behave like microwaves.
The coffee will arrive when it arrives.
The roots will grow when they grow.
The harvest will come when it’s ready.
And some of the best things you’ll ever build are probably happening right now, beneath the surface, where nobody can see them.
Including you.