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Teen to Teen Talk
Waiting for a Good
Thing
by Elizabeth Horner
If you go and stay in London for a year, like I did as a freshman
college student, you are destined to acclimate to three things: British
accents, the pitter patter of rain, and some person getting excited
about Doctor Who or Sherlock, two of the hit shows on BBC. Which is why
I think it is a testament to my self control that I did not start
watching Steven Moffat’s modern-day interpretation of Sherlock Holmes
until I had wandered my way back to the United States (and out of any
opportunity to visit the set, but let’s not mention that, shall we?).
So you can imagine my surprise when, sitting down on my couch, bowl of
popcorn in hand, fully ready to marathon-it-up as I do with most
television series, I realized that each of Sherlock’s three seasons
only has three episodes. And the next season? Is not due to be out for
a couple of years.
How does that even work? I wondered, checking to see if some of the
episodes were missing. They weren’t. In a world bent on
instant-gratification, where Mother’s and Father’s Day presents can be
ordered, wrapped, and shipped in five minutes through on-line shopping,
where you can see a friend half-way across the world through Skype, or
print 3d objects-- how on earth does anyone expect a TV audience to
wait years without losing interest?
And yet, in the spite of the fact that I find it ludicrous, I also
always take a double check when I see an article about Sherlock on
Yahoo. I keep hoping and yes, waiting, for its return to the silver
screen. More than that, there is an air of celebration in the thought;
because I can’t make Sherlock part of my weekly routine, it becomes an
exception, a holiday, of the same category of Halloween or the fair.
Moffat’s trick is also part treat.
As a college student who has to increasingly manage her own finances, I
also have to push off getting some of the things I want when I want
them. But even when things aren’t tight, I’ve gotten myself in the
habit of waiting a month or so, to see if I’ll need the money
elsewhere, or if I don’t just flat-out reconsider whatever it is I
wanted to purchase. I’ve learned that setting these limits on myself
stops me from becoming too greedy, stops me from falling down a hole
into perpetual discontentment. Maybe that’s a lesson I learned from
Sherlock, or maybe it was something I deduced on my own. It does, after
all, seem a bit elementary.
The reality is that, while you or I or anyone but Moffat, cannot
control the release of the next Sherlock season (or Doctor Who for that
matter. What is that man doing with all his time?), we can control our
own actions. In that, I urge you to be patient as well, to make
yourself chase after your desires a little longer than might be
absolutely necessary. If you don’t, you risk cheapening your
experiences, making them as throw away as the show you used to watch
every day out of habit, before you realized that you honestly didn’t
care anymore. If what you are after is truly important to you life,
waiting will make you want it more, not less, and will add to the savor
of when you finally get it.
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