“I Want It All…”

“…and I want it now!” –Queen

I’ve been thinking about patience, and this song by the rock band Queen – “I Want It All” – came to mind. The theme of this song is not patience. I think that someone with that attitude is going to be disappointed: he won’t get it “all” now, and whatever he does get, it won’t be “all.”

Impatience is associated with youth; patience is supposed to be easier as a person ages. But as I get older I don’t know that I’m getting more patient. I think I’m simply avoiding things that take a lot of time, focus and commitment.

As I look back over my life, I’ve always had a fear of commitment; I don’t think I’m unique in this – most people like having choices and commitment reduces choices. But over the last few years, I’ve added the inability to focus to my fear of commitment - I’ve become less able to focus on any one task for long. I don’t seem able to concentrate, partly due to a lack of patience.

I can trace the beginnings of my current mindset back to early 2006 to mid-2008; I coordinated a large project at work during that time. At the beginning of the project, I found myself getting bogged down in a lot of details. I had to learn to delegate. My boss at the time told me, “It’s not your job to do all the work. It’s your job to make sure the work gets done.” That helped a lot.

Once I learned to delegate, I came to like it because I could keep the big picture in mind without spending a lot of time on any one problem. This fit nicely with my fear of commitment – I could pass off time-consuming tasks on the legitimate grounds that I didn’t have time to do them.

But my current job – prototyping – involves spending a lot of time on problems so I need to change my mindset from “delegate”-mode to “problem-solving”-mode - getting down into the details is what I’m supposed to do. I need to remember that there is no one to delegate to anymore. Finding the best solutions is my job, even if those solutions take time.

Another side-effect of growing older is the perception that time is running out. When I’m focused on a task to the exclusion of all else, time goes quickly. Part of me doesn’t want time to go quickly. I’m afraid that if time goes quickly, I’ll look around and realize that my life has passed me by while I was busy. (See the song “Time Stand Still” by Rush.)

But at the same time, we have to keep moving; life is motion. I don’t want to be stagnant either. So I find myself in a dilemma: I don’t want life to go too fast, I’m impatient, I want to grow as a person, I don’t like focusing on one thing for long, and I don’t like commitment.

With that combination, my life should be filled with frustration. Maybe when I am old I’ll look back at my life and wonder why I didn’t focus more on worthwhile pursuits instead of being frustrated by my conflicting tendencies and desires. Or maybe I’ll be too lazy to care.