Today we ask you to cultivate patience.

Humans have always had difficulty with patience, but these days patience seems all but on the verge of extinction.

People have come to expect that everything should happen very quickly.  Everything must be immediate.  One looks for something on the internet, and there it is.  One orders something, and the package arrives tomorrow.  People are always instantly reachable.  They have cell phones, emails, and texting at all times.

And while all of these technological advances are wonderful in many ways, this expectation of instant gratification can be highly destructive.

Not everything happens instantly, or overnight.  Nor should it.  In nature, things take time to grow.

Seeds take time to germinate.  Plants take time to grow.  It takes nine months for a healthy human infant to grow in the womb.  And, of course, many, many years for a human child to grow into adulthood.

These processes cannot be accelerated without causing destruction.

The creative process — any creative process — requires time.  Things cannot be created overnight.  All creative work requires a germination period.  During that time, it may appear that “nothing is going on.”  In fact, there is a great deal going on under the surface.

But to the result-oriented observer who expects everything to arrive overnight, this appearance that “nothing is going on” may prompt the decision to pull the plug on the whole creative endeavor.  And this is quite tragic.  It is like getting rid of the farm because the seeds aren’t sprouting fast enough.  It is madness.

Accelerating the pace of production creates vast misery.  No matter how nice your cell phones may be, it should not require human beings to work seven days a week with insufficient rest in order to get them to you.  And this goes for everything.  No matter how nice it may be to get things overnight, it should not create misery and suffering for other humans.

Please, please, please learn to cultivate patience.

The world will not end if you don’t get everything you want right away.  And this desire to get everything right away causes the abuse of human beings everywhere, as well as the destruction of newborn creativity in the cradle, because new ideas “take too long.”

All creative endeavors — whether they’re ideas, plants, or children — require time, nurturing, and patience.  Things cannot be hurried and rushed without causing great harm.

Learn patience.  Learn patience.