It’s a true sign of the times–the impatience that has us standing in front of the countdown of a microwave, shouting “Hurry up!”

Another version of this is jerking the coffee carafe out before brewing is complete, so you can just get some in a cup.

For a while now, this societal impatience has been recognized by java Research and Development teams worldwide. One feature we enjoy in modern life is a coffeemaker with a stop-flow gadget so the coffee won’t drip down onto the warming plate, like little hissing H-bombs in a very tropical Lilliputian¹ village. It bakes in a coffee stain. Unsightly.

As lifestyles have changed to reflect the ever-growing age of technology and convenience, we have ironically become more and more inconvenienced by more and more things. We, as a species, are” running out of time.” Or at least that’s how it feels, even to me. I’m always saying “There isn’t enough time” though we all enjoy the same 24 hours, and they all still last 60 minutes each. The only exception to this might be M-Theory which postulates that there are other membranes next to us that we can’t see, but are nonetheless there, and include variations on the existence we experience in our own time-space continuum. (You might visit this blog for an interesting presentation of this from an interesting doctor).

I explore some of these ideas in a novella I am currently writing (among others) called Quintessence. I am fascinated by the idea that there could be other realities we are not privy to, nor have the capacity to comprehend. As Shakespeare, my favorite bard, said, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Thus, in the only reality we know, our time-space continuum is for all intents and purposes, fixed, and so anytime a solution for time-wasting is developed, everyone has to have it. This is so that we can go about the business of living our lives with a self-serving delusion in place that will keep us from spiraling into the nihilistic abyss.

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¹The Lilliputians, for those of you who missed that Lit class, were miniature people who lived in a village called Lilliput. I recommend this book by Jonathan Swift highly, as well as his story A Modest Proposal, which is a satirical solution to Ireland’s famine in the 18th Century.