Is The Pace Of Change Sustainable In Today's World?

‘Hey, we ran out of diapers.’ I told my husband, and within ten minutes we had them without leaving our house. A few minutes after that, I said, ‘We are going out today, and it is going to rain. We do not have umbrellas.’ And voilà, ten minutes later we had two umbrellas.

As we were getting ready to go out, I realised that her sippy cup was too big; we needed a smaller one. And ditto, we had a nice sippy cup in ten minutes.

If you are wondering if I dreamt all this up, then you are wrong. In India, they have services like Blinkit, Zepto, or Amazon Now that will deliver anything in under ten minutes or thereabouts. As you can imagine, travelling with a two-year-old in new cities like Pune and Delhi - Blinkit was a lifesaver. Similarly, they have Swiggy for food - so within ten minutes I had piping hot ginger chai. When we came back to the US, you can imagine it was a shock to the system as Amazon Prime took two days to deliver. And that was too slow. At some point, we waited weeks for something to arrive, even from Amazon.

Now, let’s switch to another example. As some of you may know, I practice Vipassana meditation, which is a ten-day silent retreat with no books or video. It’s just me for ten days. I have been practising it for close to two decades. And I have seen a difference in myself, but it took time. Like, I find it easier to respond rather than react. There is space between something happening and my response to it. I am calmer and can move on from things a bit faster. This was a process that took years. I also volunteer on the registration committee, and one member said that we get new students taking the course, but only a small percentage of them return. The primary reason is that if you are looking for quick results, then Vipassana is not it. Nowadays, with all these mindfulness apps, it is easier to get inner peace in a short amount of time. It may not last long, but it is effective—quick results.

After we got back to the US, I started my exercise routine again, and after the first strength session and a run the next day, my body ached. It hurt when I got down the stairs or got up - my muscles were screeching in pain at being used now. A part of me wanted me to take pain-relieving medicine, but I am a masochist, so I suffered until I did Yoga today. I am grateful to all the yoga masters out there who devised this ingenious sequence of postures that can fix your body - it takes time, and I had to go through each posture and breathe through the pain, but I felt better afterwards.

One small example: one of my colleague’s daughters has this pact with her friends that any message has to be responded to within thirty seconds of receiving it. That is so much pressure.

Now, the point of sharing all these examples. As a society, we are getting into the habit of short-term satisfaction - impatience. IF somebody can wait two days for a delivery, they might be considered a paragon of virtue in days to come. But then I guess our parents’ generation thought the same when emails and text messaging came about. Can you imagine living in a world where it took six months on a ship to get to a new country, or weeks before you could get a letter from a loved one??

Is it evolution, or have we reached a tipping point where things will go downhill from here? I don’t know - but the pace is picking up. And with AI, it is even quicker, but is it for the better? Only time will tell.

Have you noticed anything in your life that has hastened the pace or results?