The Need for (Un)Speed

2007 June 18

I'm more of a Mac guy nowadays so I don't buy Dell computers anymore, but I appreciated the recent copy in Dell's in-print catalog of, "Wait Less." Anything that helps you feel like you are saving valuable law3 is going to feel like simplicity.

I then began to wonder if there's any situation where you'd want to wait more?Definitely not waiting in line, or waiting for your food to come to the table, or waiting for your computer to startup (as in this Dell ad).

I guess one could look at it instead as the joy of waiting. For instance to someone that loves gardening, if they were to pop a seed into the soil and within milliseconds a flower were to pop out of the ground would they be truly happy? Or for example you wait anxiously for your kids to grow up and when that's all happened you kind of wax nostalgically that it didn't have to happen so quickly. Without a drawn-out period of anticipation, can there ever be true appreciation.

Instant gratification is indeed simplicity. But although waiting for something wonderful may lose its appeal along the way, the net result is equally, and if not more, fulfilling.

Wait less, thank less; wait more, thank more.