"I don't care where or how, I want it now!"

Anyone who has seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has seen the part where Veruca Salt has her epic brat fit and subsequently laughs when she's sent down the "bad egg" chute. We laugh at it, but we each have to deal with our inner Veruca Salt from time to time.

We live in a world not only full of desires and expectations but a world with instantaneous demands for these desires and expectations. We want what we want when we want it. There are incentives built into specific purchases to compensate the consumer if delivery does not occur within a certain time frame. Internet and technology continues to get faster and more convenient that virtually anything and everything can be obtained immediately.

We are so used to getting what we want when we want it that it becomes increasingly difficult when there is something in our lives we can not obtain in our personal time frames. Because we have become so accustomed to an instantaneous world we get more and more frustrated. Sometimes the frustration helps and causes us to work that much harder. Other times it causes us to wallow in self pity.

Unfortunately even when we work as hard as we can on something, if it is not meant to be at that point in time, it will not be. We can give and give until we are fully depleted, and it won't be enough. Sometimes patience is not only a virtue but also a necessity.

I personally am the product of life not meeting my own timetable. I would love to be in my own classroom, but for whatever reason that has not happened. Last year I probably felt more of a sense of entitlement in it all and didn't give everything I could have. This year, with a renewed focus, I did everything I could and still fell short of where I want to be. It's not fun, I admit it. My life at this point is full of unmet desires. It is absolutely unproductive, however, to mope around and lament what is not or pine for what I wish life to be. It requires proactive patience; that is, a knowledge that things will happen when they are meant to be but a life full of doing the necessary things to continue the quest and stave off stagnation and regression. Though I want what I want and I want it now, I have developed the knowledge that now is not always a possibility and am continuing in my quest to develop proactive patience. Hypomonē.