It was while I was almost one hour waiting to get through to a Government Department last week that I was reminded how impatient we have become. It is part of the modern human condition. Fair enough, you’d require the patience of a saint to wait that long on the phone. But it is quite alarming how we have become so intolerant in our quest for everything to be quick and now in all walks of life.

Meditation and mindfulness are new luxury industries. There was a time when it was free and a natural part of life, to just chill and live in the moment. Now every day has to be a theatre performance.

People can’t get from A to B without their expensive earmuff headphones. We reach for our smartphones at every chance, waiting on the bus, eating lunch or even while walking down the street.

If you check your social media feed at 10am, why is there any need to check it again 15 minutes later? Because we demand the latest news and the latest gossip and we demand it now. As for Snapchat, the clue is in the name. Our attention span has shrunk from minutes to seconds and the newspaper industry for one is a victim. We don’t have the time. We spend less time preparing and consuming food or “dashboard dining” as it’s called.

Take away the corporate hospitality at big sporting events and how many people would pay to go along? Why do betting companies need to offer almost minute-by-minute betting opportunities during matches? Apart from making easy money, there is a huge demand for this live gambling, a demand surely driven by boredom and the need for instant gratification.

And the airline industry has cashed in too, with priority boarding for those of us that simply won’t queue and can’t wait to get on the same plane as everybody else in the non-priority queue!

We are not prepared to wait for anything anymore. You won’t hear a new hit song that does not have a vocal within the first three or four seconds. We simply have no time to endure an instrumental which were the selling points for all the great pop and rock bands and musicians of the past.

The guitar riff doesn’t exist in modern pop music culture. I would go so far as to stretch this viewpoint to fashion and particularly the current fashion choice of almost every teenage boy in Ireland and sadly in many cases their fathers too, the dreaded tracksuit.

Is it, I wonder, because the easiness and speed at which one can dress themselves when they don’t have to iron or button the garment, the reason for this ubiquitous form of male Irish dress in 2019? And let’s not get started about the women in the hairdressers in their pyjamas!

Even look at Netflix. We demand that when a new series is released that we get all episodes at once. We can’t wait till next week anymore.

Of course there is nothing wrong with efficiency but there are downsides to the idea that patience has become a virtue. Anyway if you happen to have made it to the end of this piece, I salute you. You are a rare breed nowadays!

A change of heart

There was a time when I disliked Mick McCarthy. It may have had something to do with a tetchy interview I once did with him. Well, I have changed my mind. He seems to have mellowed and brought some life back into Irish soccer in its moment of need. This coming from somebody who’s favourite player of all time is Roy Keane!