Easy-fix it

We live in a fast-paced society that demands fast solutions to problems. Hungry? Grab a Snickers. Head hurt? Take an aspirin. Distant relatives banging on your door for a visit? Pour a scotch (for yourself).\nAmericans' attention span has gotten dangerously short in the last few decades. The culture of lazing away an afternoon at Wrigley Field or rolling your own dough for a pie seems to be fading in the same direction as cars with tailfins or drive-in theaters. An NPR commentator four years ago bitterly complained that Americans were not even interested in a sport as dynamic as hockey, preferring to see the highlights of the game on ESPN. \nWe are indeed busy people, and life does move pretty fast -- to borrow the immortal words of Ferris Bueller. But band-aid solutions to all problems, from health to the economy, tend to do more harm than good. Doctors lecture ad nauseum about the need to live a healthy lifestyle, change dietary habits, exercise, reduce stress and so on. This tends to fall on deaf ears. We're too busy. It is easier to pop a pain reliever (luckily, we have a choice between extra strength, maximum strength and long lasting), wash it down with coffee to give yourself a surge of energy and proceed exactly as you had before the doctor decided to waste his and your time by uttering pearls of wisdom. \nA similar approach is taken to psychotherapy. There is no doubt that depression is an illness and one that must be treated. The question is how it gets treated. One option is to spend two or three sessions a week delving into your own psyche and trying to face unpleasant realizations. But that is time-consuming and emotionally cumbersome. It is far easier to see your doctor for 15 minutes every month so they can monitor you to make sure that the prescribed dose of Paxil has not made you sprout antlers and then send you on your merry way with a refill. \nOur attitude toward the war in Iraq runs a similar path. What? The country is not a boisterous democracy with a flourishing economy? Why not?\nWhy not? It's a war! Furthermore, it is a war in the Middle East where people remember past hurts for generations, centuries even. Trying to undo the damage of 30 years of Baathist rule, as well as a century of resentment toward the British as colonizers and the Americans as their natural successors will take a lot longer than six months. It took Russia a full decade to establish a semblance of a liberal democracy after its painful divorce from Communism. Since we are far detached from the historical realities of procrustean warfare like in World War I and World War II, we are dismayed to find that there is no quick and easy solution. War refuses to go along with a band-aid therapy. \nThe reality is that we are overstimulated. In addition to events outside our control, we have created a world for ourselves akin to the one a hamster in a wheel might see. A clock in the Grand Central Station in New York shows fractions of a second ticking away. Young lawyers boast to each about who worked more hours. Hollywood has trained us to believe that any military endeavor can be successfully completed in two hours (three and a half if Spielberg is directing). We glibly believe that "time is money" and that the memo should have been on the boss's desk "yesterday." Maybe one day we will realize that, technical advancement not withstanding, good things do come to those who wait and patience is in fact a virtue.