I want it all, I want it now!

"I want the world, I want the whole world, I want to lock it all up in my pocket, it's my bar of chocolate, give it to me, now!"

Veruca Salt was perhaps one of the more repugnant characters in the children's classic 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' dreamt up by Roald Dahl.  I think the reason she ended up being everything we saw as wrong, was because she got everything she ever wanted.  We saw this as wrong and epitomising greed but mainly because the people who gave her everything she ever wanted where her parents, and when it is a child's parents that do this, we see it as bad.

The reality however is that whilst most of our needs are met by parents when we are children, not every need we have in life can be fulfilled by them.  As we get older the number of people and the number of sources we rely on to give us what we need also grows.  Like many things that are seen as bad when we are children - like individuality, setting yourself apart from the crowd, behaving and acting in ways that don't mirror those of your peers - when we grow up those traits become the things we actively desire and are expected of us.  As children, being different is bad, but as adults being different makes you memorable.  As children to have everything we ever want, we are seen as spoiled, but as adults to have everything we ever want is seen as being successful.

In many ways those children you hated when you were a child were more prepared for life than you were.  From a young age we were taught you can't have everything and you shouldn't expect to have everything in life, but what does that actually teach you?  Arguably that teaches you to accept your place and stay there, not to strive for more.  Depending on how strictly it was enforced it can actually lead you to thinking that people who do strive for more are greedy, undeserving, unappreciative, and depending on how quickly they succeed, spoiled.

One thing that this has all fed, is the focus on immediacy.  The amount of time that passes between the desire forming, and the desire being fulfilled.  The closer together we want them to be, the more demanding we are seen to be as people.  The longer they are apart the more likely we are to abandon the pursuit because it's not worth the effort, or because there are other sources that can fulfil the need much quicker.  This concept applies to many parts of our lives.  From entertainment, to food, even to our sex lives.  If we want something but we have to wait for it, we're much more likely to seek it somewhere else if we think we can get it quicker.

We want entire series of TV shows to be released at once so we can binge them in one go - Netflix has encouraged this.  We want food as quick as we can get it and if we think it will take too long to make it ourselves we order it from somewhere else - Just Eat encourages this.  If we want a committed relationship with someone who we are sexually attracted to but there's no sign of that happening any time soon we resort to hookup apps - Grindr encourages this if you are gay like me, or Tinder if you're straight from the stories I have heard.

These things all cater to our desire for immediate gratification.  We want everything and we want it now, we don't want to wait.  Make us wait and we're much more likely to look for it elsewhere.  As a content creator this is one reason why I tend to avoid creating serial content - almost all of my posts on this blog are stand alone, as are almost all of the books I have published.  I rarely link things together to the point where you have to read them in order.  As a content creator it is hard to overcome the delay between one production and the next, and manage to retain the interest and the focus of those who consumed the previous production.  Literary works are perhaps the most resilient to this desire however, as they are one of the few things you can't get resolution to from anywhere else.  That doesn't stop people creating forums, websites, Tumblr accounts, and having widespread discussions on social networks about what happens next as is so prevalent with any series that gains popularity.  Those very acts are demonstrative of the fact people can't wait to find out what happens next so they try desperately to figure it out.  When did we forget how to wait for an answer?  When did anticipation become painful?