Opinion
 

Patience makes life much easier

Timmy Le

I work in a pharmacy, and I absolutely enjoy my job. But there are always angry, impatient people coming up and asking for prescriptions. For example, a man dropped off his prescriptions the other day; I told the man that it would take 20 minutes and asked if he wanted to wait. He gave me a nasty look and started to yell. He complained that it should take me no longer than five minutes, because all I had to do was slap a label on his prescriptions and sell them to him.

I wish I could have told him to shove it and wait, but there were other people around us. I guess he didn't understand that sometimes it requires more work than he thinks to fill a few prescriptions, especially when people were in line before him. He obviously had no patience. He complained for a good 10 minutes, and in that time, I could have been halfway done with his prescription.

Sometimes, people are so rushed that they feel like everything should be done in a matter of minutes. I really feel that people should just slow down sometimes. I was one of those people who rushed everything, and because of that, I became irritated when something I did took longer than a few minutes. But now that I have slowed down, everything is going much better.

If only we could be more patient, things would be so much better. Society has created so many things through technology that leads us to become impatient. Everything is made to make our tasks more time-efficient, yet the repercussions are sometimes negative. There are drive-thru services, cable and DSL modems, and diet pills. People who are in a big rush to lose weight take these diet pills to speed up their metabolism but sometimes people are trying to go so fast that they risk their health.

I remember one time when I was entering my old apartment complex and the callbox wouldn't open the gate; I tried for a good five minutes and started to get frustrated. Needless to say, I wound up hitting the callbox a few times and broke it. I ended up paying for the damages and had a bloody, bruised hand for a few weeks.

One time, I almost broke my computer as well. I became used to the fast Internet service at school, but when I came home to my dial-up service, things were a lot different. I was literally at the point where I was about to throw my computer on the floor when it took 10 minutes to load a file.

I find that if we just take the time to relax and take things one step at a time we would realize that life is a lot more enjoyable. Life should be treated like an organic chemistry project. You can't rush anything or else your percent yields will be low and your melting points will be lower than expected. So don't rush, and instead be patient with things, because you have your whole life to take care of the things that really matter.

Le, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at timbo301@yahoo.com.