The urgency addiction: What nature can teach you about change
This week I caught myself looking for weight-loss tablets online. The ingredients were a mystery, but the promise was clear: a quick fix. That same morning, I ordered a fresh coffee because I couldn’t be bothered to brew one. Our addiction to painless results is dangerous.
When did working for what we want become intolerable?
Change doesn’t happen because we demand it, but because we patiently create the conditions that allow it.
Like many people, I promised I’d be a new human in 2025. Didn’t happen. Then Chinese New Year offered a second chance. Still nothing. Then March 1 ... We’re three months into the year, and I’m clawing for shortcuts.
We’re obsessed with immediacy. Food arrives within 30 minutes. Dating apps promise connections with a swipe. Fitness programs flaunt “14-day body transformations.” This constant exposure to immediate gratification has twisted our sense of how change happens.
The philosopher Byung-Chul Han wrote that we’ve created a world that “eliminates all forms of negativity, everything that creates distance or delay.” I agree.
Perhaps this avoidance of the difficult speaks to something deeper. The aversion to suffering itself. Jordan Peterson talks about this “The successful among us sacrifice now for the future. The unsuccessful sacrifice the future for now.” he said.
When we pursue immediate gratification, we’re swapping future development for momentary comfort. But “no pain, no gain” isn’t just a gym cliché. It’s recognition that meaningful achievement requires temporary suffering. And here’s the irony. We’re drawn to stories of struggle and perseverance.
A life without struggle is like watching a film with all the good bits cut out. We’re so focused on end results that we’ve forgotten the messy, uncomfortable middle is why we watch. We celebrate the entrepreneur who failed repeatedly before success, the athlete who overcame devastating injury, and the artist who spent decades quietly perfecting their craft. Every compelling film or book relies on conflict and hardship to engage us. We’d never sit through a story where characters had it easy.
Yet in our own lives, we’re constantly seeking to skip these scenes. We want the triumph without the trials and the victory without the battles. We crave easy success stories for ourselves while being bored by them in others.
Our culture’s promise of painless transformation isn’t just a lie. It’s a thief. It robs us of the essential process in which difficulty turns into growth. When we understand that suffering is necessary rather than optional, we stop seeing discomfort as an obstacle and start seeing it as the answer.
I live a stone’s throw from Fuxing Park on the Nanchang Road side. Its trees have stood bare for months. But I know what’s coming. In a few weeks, their branches will burst with delicate pink blossoms. No amount of wishing makes them bloom any sooner. Their refusal to budge got me thinking. The solution to our impatience is happening right in front of us. Nature shows a more natural way to transform.
Think how bamboo grows. For up to five years, it develops an extensive underground root system with no visible growth. Then it shoots up to 91 centimetres in a day. What looked like overnight success is really the result of years of invisible preparation.
Inside a chrysalis, a caterpillar doesn’t simply sprout wings. It dissolves almost completely before reconstructing cell by cell. What appears dormant from the outside is a profound change happening on the inside.
We all have our own transformation story. Four years ago, I submitted my first column to this publication. Reading it now makes me wince a little, not because it was bad, but because I can see how my writing has evolved. That growth didn’t happen overnight, because it couldn’t. Each week of putting words on the page, receiving feedback, failing and trying again laid groundwork for what eventually emerged.
My experience in therapy follows a similar pattern. When I began addressing trauma and mental health issues, I wanted a quick fix. I considered drowning in medication, numbing with alcohol or anything to circumvent hard work. I’ve learned that becoming my healthier self requires time and deep commitment. Changes don’t come in dramatic revelations but in small moments of insight that build week by week.
The paradox is that our impatience prevents the transformation we seek. If you break open a chrysalis to “help” a caterpillar along, you’ll destroy its metamorphosis. A writer who demands brilliance with every sentence produces nothing at all. Our demand for immediate evidence of change destroys the delicate work happening beneath the surface.
While we all wait for cherry blossoms to appear, I’m trying a different approach with my own aspirations. Less forcing, more allowing. Less demanding, more trusting. The trees don’t worry whether their blossoms will appear, they simply continue drawing nutrients, strengthening roots and preparing for inevitable spring. They understand what we’ve forgotten: Change doesn’t happen because we demand it, but because we patiently create the conditions that allow it.
This isn’t to glorify unnecessary suffering or dismiss genuine innovations that make life easier. But there’s a difference between avoiding needless pain and skipping necessary growth. No more quick fixes, shortcuts or hollow promises.
Nature has been at this a lot longer than we have. It’s time we follow her lead.
