Realizing that my prescription bottle had nearly been emptied, I quickly turned to my smartphone, scanned the bottle, and placed my order for a refill. And that was that — there weren’t any complications or setbacks that barred the entire process from taking less than a minute.

So you can imagine how shocked I was upon having to deal with an exact opposite situation in the pharmacy. Not only did I have to walk all the way to the back of the store to reach the pharmacy, but I also had to stand in a decent sized line. While waiting, there were complications galore in the form of insurance companies not answering the pharmacists’ inquiries in addition to customers asking about prescriptions that weren’t yet available. Until I was bestowed with the much awaited inquiry about my last name, it took a total of about twelve minutes that I felt had been undeservingly wasted from my life.

If this were a television show and you ended up turning on the television at the exact moment of my ranting, you probably would have labeled me as a spoiled, undeserving brat. Truth be told, it does seem foolish to complain about waiting for a couple of minutes. But, in my defense, I had only spent a small fraction of that time to express my need for the refill. Why should I have needed to wait that long to simply pick it up? If it was so easy to place the refill, then why couldn’t the pickup process be just as quick and easy? Such a great contrast in wait time bothered me, and I had a realization nothing short than a personally eye-opening epiphany. The fact that the refill process took such a short time is what caused me to experience a bout of impatience. Continuing that train of thought, I concluded that the technological advancements so wonderfully offered to us by modern society are what have made me sometimes so impatient. I have become accustomed to being so easily and quickly catered to many of my needs.

Let me explain. Please do not, in any way, mistaken my thoughts for ungratefulness for all the wonders offered to those of us who are blessed to take advantage of society’s technological advancements. I love being able to start the car without stepping out in the freezing Chicago weather. I could never imagine functioning without our irreplaceable dishwasher. I greatly appreciate our refrigerator’s water filter as a wonderful replacement for the time consuming task of boiling tap water.

The list goes on and on. Those are but just a few of the amenities offered to those of us who are lucky and blessed members of such a modern society. Those advancements have transformed tasks from being complicated and time consuming to being simple and quick to complete. Things that used to take many minutes or several hours have been significantly reduced in time. Such drastic changes, however, have led me to have a certain sense of disappointment and unnerving impatience with tasks that take longer than I feel they should. I feel entitled to being quickly and easily satisfied.

After all, if it takes me no more than five minutes to place an online order for a bracelet, it does not make sense for me that I need to wait five days to have it in my hands. I feel as if I am entitled to having it in my hands in the same amount of time that it took me to place my order. Nowadays, it seems out of the ordinary to need to wait that long for something to happen.

But what about the time that it takes to mend relationships? The time that it takes to dissolve grudges? To resolve complex misunderstandings? Sure, we have car devices that are so advanced that they can direct the car into effectively parallel parking in a fraction of the time, but what about tools to help us quickly alleviate relationship wounds?

The fact is that there are countless real life situations that are not easily fixed or accelerated by modern society’s advancements. This, in turn, persistently aggravates my insistence to be impatient.

Aside from focusing on my difficult-to-fix personal bouts of laziness and procrastination, I figure there are two possible solutions for me to help remove such a sense of impatience in everyday situations. On the one hand, I could hope that society will eventually develop modern ways and techniques to quickly and easily deal with all of my problems. On the other hand, perhaps I could ease off my constant use of modern tools that make simple life tasks easy and quick to complete.

Since I have too many problems to count, and most of my problems are not feasibly fixable by modern technological advancements, I’m probably better off with trying my second solution.

In conclusion, I should probably use the three minutes that it requires to physically call the pharmacy the next time I decide to refill my prescription. By doing so, it won’t seem to be such a hindrance for me to deal with the amount of time wasted with line traffic at the pharmacy counter.