The Lost Art Of Delayed Gratification And What It Means For Our Survival

     I hate cannibalizing old blog and column ideas.  Really, I do.  But this one has stuck in my sizable craw for some time now.  
     Why are we in such a big hurry with everything?
     Anyone who has seen even a bit of the things I've written lately knows how I hate the idea of early voting, for a myriad of reasons none of which I'll recount here mostly because everyone is tired of hearing about it from me.  To me, the evils and missteps that spring from the "convenience" of it far outweigh any benefits gained from increased participation.  And this has nothing to do with voter suppression or disenfranchisement or any one of a hundred two dollar words someone with a healthy social conscience and an equally big chip on their shoulder can come up with.  It's about....  Oh, sorry.  I'm at it again...
     I first wrote about the ever-increasing speed of our world in this column I penned a couple years back during a temporary gig with the Lincoln Journal-Star.  Our children are sped through life with things like pre-pre-pre school, never having the chance to enjoy the innocence of life as a child but instead forced to limber up and jump on a societal treadmill of our creation.  I cringe when I see shows like Toddlers and Tiaras which, if it doesn't already, will soon violate innumerable child labor laws mostly because someone will be watching it, finally come to their senses, and lawyer up. 
     This is not, however, necessarily an indictment of only voting laws or parents no matter how target-rich those particular environments are.  The idea of quicker being better is something that has permeated every part of our lives.  Fast food.  Instant win lottery tickets.  Accelerated college degrees.  Early high school graduation.  Express lanes at the grocery store.  Pre-packaged food.  Microblogs like Twitter.  Remote controls.  And on and on.
     Is it all about convenience or is there something else at work here, some sort of hidden under-the-radar evolutionary process going on that we'll never notice until we all end up one day with hairy elbows to go along with our winged feet and surly dispositions with it all happening so gradually that no one has noticed the change?  When we were cavemen and women, our lives boiled down to basically three things:  Food, shelter, and mating.  Simple survival - both short term and long - kept us occupied and completely captured our attention, for if we strayed and lost our concentration, we died out.  
     Life has now become so easy that our minds - being the natural explorers they are - turn towards the next thing mostly out of sheer boredom.  We've developed a cerebral speed dial setting that's instinctive now.  And we pass it down to our children as sort of an involuntary spasm, feeling that if it's instinctive and good for us then it is good for them as well.  I'm not so sure.
     No one wants to give up their convenience, myself included.  But there will come a day when things are so easy for us that we'll lose our edge and become soft to the ways of survival and, instead of feeling the need to chase down the wildebeest we will find that the wildebeest - having been patient and at the same time keeping it's instinctive edge - is now tracking us.