Our Fast-Food Society

Are people moving too fast? Is no one having a real conversation anymore as a result? Is there any way to turn back? Or are you happy this way? Is this fast-paced world causing more and more disorders of anxiety and panic attacks and even agoraphobia?

In one of my classes the other day, a student lamented that she was “docked” at work for not getting the customer’s order to him in a timely 60-second fashion and that if it continued to happen, down would the ax come, clean and swift. After all, the customer shouldn’t have to wait. It’s “fast” food for a reason. And heaven forbid, we can’t stuff our faces or slurp our drinks the moment we order them the way we can find out every ingredient that went into that drink within a 10-second swipe of our fingers across our phones. Weather today? One second. Top celebrity break up? Two seconds. Country with the lowest population? Maybe you’ll have to wait three whole seconds for your answer, but it certainly isn’t close to sixty. Slow Wi-Fi? Call in the National Guard! It’s a crisis!

I thought about that today getting my coffee through the drive-thru and how recently I’ve been stressed out about finding my credit card or cash fast enough, wondering if the 18-year-old under the gun to get my order out in the fastest time possible, not bothering to make eye contact with me, would actually drop it onto my lap, thinking I’m holding it already when I’m not, and me making excuses to her (Oh, forgive me, I just need to find my credit card), because I can’t seem to get my act together fast enough! Worse, even, I begin to panic that the car behind me will start to honk its horn, forcing my credit card to sprout wings, fly into the air and onto the car’s floor, where I feel around to, desperately, find it in time all the while looking in my rear view mirror to make sure no one behind me is uttering obscenities at how slow I’m being! (And breathe.) It’s absurd. I, myself, will pull over to make sure I have everything ready to go, lest I be penalized for taking more than the allotted minute and hold up the line.
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Clearly, I’m not just discussing fast food. I’m discussing that we are now a society of fast food. We want it. We want it now. We don’t want to wait. We don’t want to take our time to enjoy things or learn. And we hardly want to think. We want our news in 280 characters of fewer, our poetry to fit on Instagram squares, and our god-damned purchases the next day damn it. Amazon is kicking everyone to the curb. I hear it everywhere. Well, Amazon can get it to me in two days. Why would I wait for the same thing elsewhere? Yup. Why wait when you don’t have to?

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The problem is…some things take the wait. Some things only happen with perseverance. And some things need tilling and nurturing to be the best they can be. Not everything can be "got" through a fast-food window. Some things are actually better when done a bit slowly. Love. The perfect apple. A sandcastle. A friendship. Music. Walks. A great play.

And some things worthwhile only happen with hard work. We learn by going a bit more slowly. We make lots of mistakes when we rush things. And I’m seeing every facet of life hurt by our fast-food culture. Student writing. My writing. Conversations between people.  Patience. Debate.  So much thinking is regurgitation. Repeats of tweets. Black and white ideas vs. discussing the grey areas, seeing other point of views, that old thing of the past called listening.
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I’m not sure what we do about it. And it scares me. It actually scares me. And I wonder if we just need to blow ourselves up like the dystopian tales of the past to start over. But would anything change or are we cursed to suffer the same fate into infinity?  I don’t have answers and perhaps that’s what scares me so much. So. I sit, cross my legs, take a sip of my maple pecan coffee, slowly, making that ‘ahhhh’ sound after I swallow,  and I write an expanded moment, like the ones I try to teach my students…and I take my time...

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