According to my favorite professor in College, delayed gratification is postponing rewarding oneself, or ones wants till the right time, the opposite of instant gratification. For instance if you want to buy a TV, to save up for it for six months and buy it afterwards is an example of delayed gratification. To pay through credit card and save up for it, while enjoying your Sony LCD 3D plasma flat screen, is an example of instant gratification.

It’s like you just have to have in NOW. In a world where everything is instant, and the slower life is taken for granted, or completely obliterated, I wonder if delayed gratification still has its place here and now?

I was thinking that social media- such as twitter- mind you I have a twitter account- precisely encourages instant gratification- such as twitting what you feel- in an instant. One click and you feel better just because you ranted out to the world that you’re hungry, or sleepy. I read in one article that social media sites such as these encourage cyber empathy, having support from family and friends through these means. There will be a different space to ponder about that.  

Even PhD’s and other courses are shortened, 3 month courses, 1 year masters, from undergrad to Ph.D. One can have a masters or a doctorate degree, the shortest time possible the better. It’s like we are in such a hurry, what ever happened to delayed gratification?  Maybe it’s the fault of the philosophers that always say time is of the essence. People try to take things and compress them into a short span of time, like filling a backpack with all your things. Why not be friends with time, have tea with it. Why do we need to abuse it, and get it over with? It is funny, in trying to accomplish so many things in the time we have, with the stress we get, we certainly will die in a short span of time.

I am saving up for my future, and my families future, I certainly need to practice delayed gratification here. Though it’s not so easy for me to spend my salary, not even on big things, but food, and going out, I have to restrain myself. This is what got me thinking. I have to be smarter than that to be able to think about the future, to be able to think about something that I do not see yet.

Delayed gratification, whether it is a virtue that we must all practice, or a luxury that people don’t have, it certainly is a thing that is becoming obsolete. Wouldn’t it be so much rewarding if we really work hard for the things we have, or will get? Wouldn’t the value of things material and non material be more if is not instant? If so, then I wonder how we can say that we are doing anything valuable at all.