Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye: The advent of the impatient generation

I have a sister called Patience and a niece whose name is Mirirai. Both names denote the importance of endurance and the virtue of waiting. Yet in the past few years, we have seen the advent of an impatient generation.

It is a generation that is always in a hurry and believes in the twin virtues of speed and urgency, even in cases where speed and urgency are unnecessary. Impatience is the totem of this generation and they have no time to wait in everything that they do.

You can tell the advent of impatience and the hurriness of today’s generation by some of the names you hear nowadays. There is a guy called Faster and yet another one called Fambisai; there is a shop called QuickTime, a restaurant called Chop Chop and an agrarian enterprise that was branded the Fast-Track Land Reform programme.

Everything is now branded in quickness and in a sense of rush and hurriness . It is all a rush to nowhere but no one cares. They all just do not have the time.

Indeed, it’s a generation of doing things quickly. Their whole language and lingo denotes fastness; from fast food outlets to words like ” kuchimhanya ” and ” tsom – tsom ” the denotation is all about speed and rapidity.

Welcome to the advent of an impatient generation.

Their dropped jeans are unbuckled because they just don’t have the time to put on the belt, their spiky hair means the comb will delay them from whatever they want to do while their box cut is a message that they were too impatient to wait for the barber to complete his job.

Technology has not helped matters on the utility of patience and taking one’s time. Indeed, technology has fuelled impatience and fertilised the zest for hurried enterprises even as it has made things easy and hastened the rigour of work. What we used to do manually is now done quickly and in record time by all sorts of electronic gadgets that have dominated the generational moment .

Patience has died mainly because technology has engendered laziness and given impetus to the creeping restlessness of today’s generation. Where we would physically go to the library to read books, they now google on their phones at home or from anywhere; where we would use the bus to go to Hurungwe to alert a relative of a funeral in the family, a simple phone call or an announcement on the family chat group have become the methods of choice when it comes to communicating the funerals of our loved ones.

Today, even lobola ceremonies are being held online without joining any queue, let alone walking out of their bed. One can now deposit, withdraw or transfer money using their phone in the comfort of their own home. Nowadays, one simply has to be online and not nrcesarily in the line!

Even in the bedroom, dildos have taken over. Yes, technology has mounted the matrimonial realm as well (no pun intended).

Indeed, it’s the era of e-sex, e-learning, e-shopping, e-banking, etc. While it is true that technology has helped in making work easier, the downside is that it has bred impatience, engendered laziness and created a generation that is in a hurry: a restless generation in a rush that wants all things done in the nick of time and in the here and now.

They have no patience.They simply can’t wait. And as they say in their lingo, they are just eager to ” finish the sports ” in whatever they do, regardless of the nature of the “sport.”

A generation in a hurry ; Scoping their terrain

1. Diction and communication platforms

As I have said, we now have an impatient generation that wants to rush through things in their bid to quickly “finish the sports”. They no longer take their time to savour and enjoy syntax and diction. Brevity has become the bane of mordern communication in this era of impatience and rush. There are people who have written to me to say while they enjoy and like this column so much, their problem with the Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye weekly treatise is that it is too long.

I understand them as most of them belong to this generation of terse communication where brevity is key. The era of blogs and the long treatise is coming to an end under our very watch. The reader has become impatient. They are in a rush. Impatience and hurried communication have taken over. This explains the advent of the twitter platform of communication, that terse world of numbered characters where communication is just but a sigh. The fact that twitter has become a popular communication platform means that we have all become an inpatient generation that now speaks in sighs, in tweets and in terse but specific numbered characters.

My only word of caution to the young generation is that while twitter maybe popular elsewhere, they should never “tweet” in the bedroom. And here I am speaking figuratively. If they as much as “tweet” in that hallowed room, their mariages will not last as married women do not like spouses who have the uncanny habit of “tweeting” in that sacred place. I shall return to this issue later. Indeed, our women do not like spouses who quickly finish the sports. For they want it to take time .

2 . Dressing and *appearance

As I have alluded to in my introduction to this piece, we have seen the advent of the impatient generation of spiky hair and baggy, dropped but unbuckled jeans. This is a generation in a hurry and they have no time to waste buckling up their trousers with a belt. They are impatient. They are in a rush and they quickly want to go.

Their shoes are slip-ons because they have no time to tie up the laces if they buy shoes with laces. The box-cut denotes a hurried enterprise on their heads as they have no time to waste waiting for the barber to complete the hair cut. Gara wadya magetsi anoenda, as they say in their lingo. They just want to go. But God knows where to they want to go.

Welcome to the impatient generation.

3 . Transport — Welcome to mushika – shika

The faith in buses and trains has gone. We had lived an era where the commuter omnibus (kombi) was the mode of transport for those who do not wish to wait. Yet for the impatient and supersonic generation, there has been the craze of mushika – shika , those small vehicles that are driven confidently but dangerously at supersonic speed in the wrong lane and that dexterously try to avoid on-coming traffic. Oftentimes, these Wish vehicles that dominate the mushika-shika craze have caused fatal accidents on our dilapidated roads. But they have become the mode of transport of choice for our restless and impatient generation that is always in a rush. Commuter omnnibuses have become too big for them and will delay them. They are now resorting to mushika – shika , this impatient generation that is always in a rush!

They are hurrying. They have no time to waste. They just want it done, whatever it is. They just want to quickly finish the sports; in this case the sport of travelling.

4 . Kuromba : The mbinga generation that believes in quick riches

In the olden days, the witch was that old man or woman in the village who bewitched people, killed them and combed the graveyard during the night to eat the buried corpse.

But gone is this type of witch. Gone too is the generation of hard workers who honestly slugged it out to earn their money, wealth and fortune. Indeed, gone is the era of very rich people but with traceable wealth; the era of Warren Buffet, Patrice Motsepe, Geoff Bizos, Aliko Dangote and Strive Masiyiwa, guys who worked long and hard for their fame and fortune.

Here comes the era of mbinga , young but rich people with no traceable corporate ownership. While the book of Genesis tells us all humanity has to slug it out and sweat for its wealth through the rigour of hard work, today’s impatient generation is in a rush. They want to be millionaires as soon as they come out of their diapers. This explains the notion of kuromba that is now being done even by teenagers. The young people who mainly constitute the impatient heneration have been sucked in the strange and murky world of marine spirits and snakes that spit money.

Today’s generation is in a hurry. They just can’t wait. They believe in the quick buck and they want to get rich quickly. Even if the kuromba condition is that they will make their money but they will have to die young, they dont care. As long as they “ring” ( kurira ) during their short life span of wealth and fortune.

5 . The take – me – quick drugs (mutoriro / kambwa )

To underline their impatience and as a mark of their penchant to spend no time in any enterprise, the young, generation has taken to illict but dangerous substances that take no time in knocking them out. After all, they are a restless generation that must quickly finish the sports, including the “sport” of drinking.

Gone are the days when people would go to the bar kunotandara, to spend time with friends and come back home drunk well into the night. The young generation has drastically cut short the drinking enterprise by dint of the nature of the drugs and substances they are now consuming.

In this era of mutoriro or kambwa , one can start drinking at seven in the morning and by quarter past seven, only 15 minutes later, they would have completely knocked out and will require someone to ferry them home.

Welcome to the new, impatient generation. Our boys and girls just have no patience in all they do. They are just in a hurry. When it comes to these dangerous drugs they are consuming, it appears they are impatient even when it comes to their deaths.They can’t wait to die. They are in a rush to meet up with their Maker.

Yes, even when it comes to their lives, they also are in a rush to finish the sports. Takaenda takaenda as they say in their lingo and in words that are explicit in their expression of the utility of rushing, speed and impatience!

Conclusion : Patience is a Virtue

Patience is a virtue. But today’s generation is impatient. They are always in a rush. As described in this piece, everything is hurried. It’s all about being quick. From their language to their dress sense, from their transport choice to their chosen liquor, from the early marriages to the desire to get rich quickly, we have seen the advent of an impatient generation that lives life in the fast lane; a generation in a rush.

Indeed, patience is a perennial virtue. Marriages, particularly the hallowed space called the bedroom, is not a space for rush and quickness. As I have warned, earlier, if you “tweet”or act tersely in the bedroom in sync with today’s rushed demeanour, your marriage will not last.

For the sake of matrimonial peace and to preserve marital sanctity, I plead with those of you who are part of the young generation to take your time in that sacred and hallowed place.

Today’s generation is in a misplaced rush and does not understand that even in success, there is need for foreplay. And the foreplay of success is hard work. Hard work must always precede fame and fortune. One does not instantly become rich without the rigour of life’s foreplay, which is hard, honest work.

Patience pays. Elsewhere examples abound which confirm the virtue of patience. Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia became President at the sixth attempt. In the bible, we are told Sarah bore her first child Isaac when she was almost 100 years old, when her hope was almost lost.

We learn that hope is never fast-tracked. The underlying dictum is that good things happen to those who wait. And not to those whose plans are always in the pressure cooker, those so eager to become milionaires as soon as they ditch their diapers.

In this era instancy has become a God; in this era of instant porridge and instant coffee, it is prudent to repose faith in patience, endurance and the dictum of hard, honest work.

The Ibo wisdom from West Africa tells us that the slow stride of the tiger is not a sign of weakness or cowardice, but it is a sign of wisdom. For wisdom is slow and cautious.

Indeed, patience is a virtue. The citizens of Zimbabwe have waited long and hard for the winds of change to sweep across this our beloved country.

Our young generation must tap from the wisdom of their elders by playing their part in patiently waiting in the queue to register to vote and to do the actual voting in 2023.

The simple trick for next year is to register big, to vote big and to win big. The wise citizens of this land have always known that change is not instant coffee and that is why they have been biding their time by slugging it out in the past decades with some of them paying the ultimate price.

The citizens have always known that change can only be delayed but it cannot be denied.

I declare with confidence that next year will be the citizens’ year. For the citizens have patiently waited for their hour in a promising yellow sunrise.

Patience. Patience. Patience.

Luke Tamborinyoka, a journalist by profession and an ardent political scientist, is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a change champion in the Citizens Coalition for Change ( CCC ). You can interact with him on his facebook page or via the twitter handle @ luke_tambo .