I love to cook in my Crock-Pot. You can say I’m a crackpot for my Crock-Pot. The benefits of slow cooking are numerous, as detailed by Rose Mary in a Consumer Reports website story from 2007, “This is because mainly fresh, wholesome ingredients are used in the cooking. The ingredients are cooked at a low temperature for a long period of time, thus they become extremely tender and delicious. As there is little evaporation, the food will not dry out. The natural juices from the meats and vegetables are retained in the pot, thus, the cooked food are nutritious as well as tasty.” The key word here is slow, which sadly, has become a 4-letter word.

On Sunday, I was grocery shopping for a few of the missing ingredients I needed for my incredible Beef Stew recipe, namely the Beef, but also Celery, Potatoes, and Beef Broth. Ahead of me in line at the 8 items or less checkout was a father and his hopelessly lost, mentally challenged, son. The father was about 10 years older than me, tall, skinny with wispy white uncombed hair and his son a 20 something struggler in a baseball cap and jeans with a steely determination on his face to get this PIN entering thing done and done right. Teeth firmly clenched to his stuck out of the side of his mouth tongue, the son punched keys furiously like a Court Reporter, while pop kept swiping his ATM card after each, fruitless, attempt.  The older gentleman looked on and patiently coached his son through the pushing of the correct keys. A mindless task for most of us. Clearly, the son was struggling as they kept after it through no less than four attempts.

I stared intently with deepening curiosity at to what was going on. I was in no rush. As a brother of a sister who had cerebral palsy I get patience. I don’t always have it for able-bodied and sharp minded others but I always did for my baby sister. I watched expressionless until the father realized he was holding me up and he apologized profusely. I shook my head and said, “no problem.” It really wasn’t. He seemed relieved.  They made it through, grabbed their groceries and strolled away probably never to be seen by me again.  A moment gone in a flash but surely a moment not lost on a man and his simple man-child.

We are a now, now, now, now, now, now, NOW culture. Heck, I remember a time in my lifetime there were no mobile phones, no laptops, no WiFi, no computers. You couldn’t shop on Sundays. You had to pay in cash or check. Credit Cards or ATM’s weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. People talked to each other. Life seemed to crawl along but it wasn’t so bad. You had to work and work hard for gratification. That seemed just and wholesome.  It isn’t acceptable any more.  I can remember times with my sister, which were equally difficult, when the seemingly fast food order of Chicken McNuggets took forever.

Why have we lost our patience? Less empathic human beings make wise cracks, roll eyes, tap toes, maybe state an exasperated comment of, “C’mon!” Is patience all that too much to ask for those less fortunate than ourselves?  Joyce Meyer says, “Patience is not the ability to wait but how you act while you’re waiting.”  Just because something doesn’t happen right now doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.  What makes it so hard to wait?

Have patience.  It’s more than just a virtue, it’s extremely tender and delicious just like my beef stew.