My grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 84. Her memorable life advice was: “Always have something to look forward to.” She was a great believer in not getting what you want: “As long as you want something, you have something to live for.” This is kind of depressing and counterintuitive “wisdom”, as it suggests that you will be best served by living in abject misery and in a state of constant yearning. And yet, she was right.
In my view, when we can have everything we want exactly when we want it, it doesn’t bring us joy. Human beings are best served by hope, anticipation and a bit of healthy waiting around. This relates to the vastly underrated ability to “save up”. It’s hard to save up money. It is maybe even harder to save up your attention or your excitement. Everything from Just Eat (literally impatience in brand nominative shape) to Klarna (the “payment plan” that promises the ability to “shop now, pay later”) suggests that the cult of “gimme now” has taken over. But I sense a disturbance in the force.
Television binge-watchers (guilty) are slowly waking up to the benefits of looking forward to things and praising the current slow drip of shows such as Succession and Yellowjackets, where episodes are released on a wait-for-it weekly basis, just like television in the olden days. My hope is that we are returning to an era of delayed gratification. Imagine not waiting for the programmers to ration your viewing: instead, you do it instinctively yourself because you know that it’s more enjoyable. Imagine operating in a world of reverse Klarna where you don’t buy it now, but instead wait to see if they’ve still got it when you’ve saved up the money to buy it later. This is a very different kind of Yolo (you only live once) energy. Yolo is about impetuosity; the new Yolo is instead the impulse towards recognising that you may indeed “only live once” but you might live for rather longer than historically expected, so perhaps you had better stretch things out a bit. Friends, this is the way.
Viv Groskop is a writer, broadcaster and standup comedian
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