What Growing Up Without Convenience Taught Me About Resilience, Gratitude, and Simplicity

Sometimes, when everything isn't immediately available, you develop an appreciation for things you might otherwise overlook.

I've been thinking a lot lately about convenience.

We live in a remarkable time. So much of modern life has been designed around making things easier, faster, and more accessible. We can order almost anything we want and have it delivered to our homes. We can communicate with someone on the other side of the world almost instantly. We can have dinner arrive without leaving the house, summon a car from our phones, automate our bills, stream virtually any form of entertainment we want, and outsource countless tasks that previous generations simply had to do themselves.

There is an enormous amount to appreciate about that. Convenience has made life easier in ways that are genuinely meaningful, and access to technology, healthcare, education, transportation, and information has opened doors that were once unavailable to many people.

But I have started to wonder whether there is also something we lose when almost everything becomes convenient.

I grew up in Jamaica, and I wouldn't describe my childhood as one of deprivation or hardship. We had what we needed, and wanted. What we didn't necessarily have was the level of immediacy that has become so normal today.

There was no Amazon Prime bringing almost anything you could imagine to your doorstep in a day or two. Unlimited Wi-Fi wasn't simply something you assumed you would always have. Entertainment wasn't available on demand, twenty-four hours a day. If you wanted something, you would have to wait for it. If something broke, you might have to figure out how to fix it. If you couldn't find what you wanted, you might simply have to make do with what you had.

At the time, none of this felt particularly philosophical. It was just life.

But looking back, I think there were lessons in that kind of life that I didn't fully appreciate until much later.

When you grow up without the expectation that everything should be immediate, you develop a different relationship with inconvenience. You become accustomed to waiting. You learn to improvise. You become comfortable with the idea that sometimes the answer isn't going to be obvious or readily available, and that doesn't mean you are stuck.

You learn how to figure things out.

And I think there is something valuable about that.

Before everything was available at the push of a button

One of the things I notice about modern life is how quickly inconvenience has become something we expect to eliminate.

If we want something, we order it.

If we're hungry, we have food delivered.

If we're bored, we reach for our phones.

If we need information, we search for it.

If we don't like something, we replace it.

If we need to get somewhere, we open an app.

If we're looking for entertainment, there is an almost endless supply waiting for us.

Again, none of this is inherently bad. I use these conveniences too, and I'm grateful for many of them.

But when everything is readily available, you don't get as many opportunities to experience the other side of the equation: what happens when it isn't?

Growing up without that expectation of immediacy meant that waiting was normal.

You couldn't always have what you wanted right away, so you learned to wait.

You couldn't always replace something immediately, so you learned to take care of it.

You didn't always have access to endless entertainment, so you learned to entertain yourself.

You didn't have unlimited options, so you learned to appreciate the option that was available.

And when you couldn't simply solve every problem by spending money or tapping a screen, you had to develop another skill: resourcefulness.

There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from knowing you can figure things out.

Not the confidence that comes from knowing you'll always have access to a solution, but the confidence that comes from knowing that even when the obvious solution isn't available, you'll probably find another way.

That is a useful quality to carry into adulthood.

There is a difference between hardship and inconvenience

I think this distinction is important because conversations about resilience can sometimes become unnecessarily romantic.

There is a tendency to say that adversity builds character, and while difficult experiences can certainly teach us things, I don't believe people need to suffer in order to become strong.

Poverty is not character-building simply because it is poverty. Financial insecurity can be incredibly stressful. Lack of access to healthcare, education, transportation, or economic opportunity can have consequences that extend far beyond inconvenience. There are hardships that no one should have to experience, and I would never suggest otherwise.

What I'm talking about is much simpler.

Sometimes, growing up without every modern convenience simply means that you have to wait, improvise, or make do.

And those experiences can teach you things without requiring trauma.

They can teach patience without requiring loss.

They can teach resourcefulness without requiring crisis.

They can teach gratitude without requiring deprivation.

You learn that boredom isn't an emergency. You learn that not having something immediately isn't necessarily a problem. You learn that an afternoon doesn't need to be carefully planned to be enjoyable, and that people can create their own entertainment.

You learn that a good meal doesn't have to come from a restaurant, that a memorable day doesn't necessarily require spending money, and that being together can be an activity in itself.

These are small lessons, but small lessons have a way of becoming part of how you see the world.

Maybe convenience has changed our relationship with patience

One of the things I find most interesting about convenience is that it doesn't simply change what we can do. It changes what we expect.

When something used to take three days and now takes three hours, three hours starts to feel slow.

When you can communicate instantly, waiting for a response can feel strange.

When almost anything can be delivered, going to a store can feel like an unnecessary chore.

When information is always available, having to sit with a question for a while can feel uncomfortable.

When entertainment is endless, boredom can start to feel like a problem that needs to be solved.

And perhaps this is one of the unintended consequences of having so much access. The more accustomed we become to immediacy, the less comfortable we can become with waiting.

I don't think that means we need to reject technology or convenience. That would be both unrealistic and unnecessary.

But I do think it is worth noticing.

Because patience is a skill.

Resourcefulness is a skill.

Being comfortable with boredom is a skill.

Knowing how to make do is a skill.

And like most skills, they are easier to maintain when we actually have opportunities to practice them.

We spend so much of adulthood trying to buy back simplicity

This is the part that fascinates me most.

Think about the things many of us say we want as we get older.

More time.

More freedom.

Less stress.

More connection.

More presence.

More time with our families.

More opportunities to travel.

More moments when nobody needs anything from us.

In other words, we spend much of adulthood trying to create the conditions in which we can finally slow down.

We work for decades so that one day we can have more time. We build businesses so that eventually we can have more freedom. We accumulate wealth so that we can stop worrying about money. We pay for expensive vacations so that we can sit on a beach and do absolutely nothing.

And there is nothing wrong with any of this. I understand the appeal completely.

But there is an irony here that I find difficult to ignore.

We can spend so much of our lives building increasingly complicated lives that we eventually have to spend money to return to simplicity.

We work hard so we can afford a vacation where we don't have to work.

We build beautiful homes with outdoor spaces so we can sit outside and watch the sunset.

We spend thousands of dollars traveling somewhere tropical so that we can lie on a beach with nowhere to be.

We accumulate enough money to eventually buy back the one thing that becomes increasingly scarce as our responsibilities grow: time.

And sometimes I wonder whether that tells us something about what we actually value.

We spend our lives buying back what was once ordinary

There is something almost poetic about the fact that many of the things we crave most as adults are remarkably simple.

A quiet morning.

A long conversation.

A home-cooked meal.

A walk outside.

A day without an agenda.

A beautiful view.

A beach.

A sunset.

Time with people we love.

None of these things require much in themselves.

And yet we often need considerable financial and professional freedom to experience them regularly.

This is where my childhood comes back to me.

Not because I want to go backward, and certainly not because I think life was somehow better simply because it was less convenient.

Rather, I think growing up without today's level of immediacy gave me an early understanding that a good day doesn't require very much.

You don't need an itinerary.

You don't need a reservation.

You don't need an expensive experience.

You don't need to document it.

You don't even necessarily need a plan.

Sometimes you just need somewhere to go, something to eat, people you enjoy being around, and enough time to actually enjoy it.

Simplicity has become a luxury

Perhaps that is why I find the current fascination with "slow living" so interesting.

We talk about slowing down as though it is a new discovery. We book retreats to disconnect from technology. We schedule time to rest. We seek out quiet vacations. We create morning routines designed to help us avoid immediately checking our phones.

We have created entire industries around helping us do less.

And again, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Modern life can be demanding, and sometimes we genuinely need to step away from it.

But I do find the irony fascinating.

Something that was once simply part of ordinary life has become aspirational.

Quiet has become something we have to seek out.

Boredom has become something we have to learn to tolerate.

Unstructured time has become something we have to schedule.

And simplicity has become something we sometimes have to pay for.

Perhaps the question isn't whether modern convenience is good or bad. It is whether we have allowed convenience to convince us that everything should be easy, immediate, and optimized.

Because life isn't always going to be that way.

And perhaps we are better off remembering how to be okay when it isn't.

Growing up without convenience didn't make my childhood better. It gave me a perspective I still value.

I want to be careful not to turn this into nostalgia for a childhood that was somehow superior because it wasn't as technologically advanced.

That's not what I mean.

I am grateful for the conveniences I have now. I appreciate technology. I appreciate being able to order something I need without spending an afternoon looking for it. I appreciate having information at my fingertips. I appreciate being able to communicate with people I love instantly, regardless of where they are.

I don't want to go backward.

But I don't want to forget, either.

I don't want to lose the ability to wait.

I don't want every inconvenience to feel like an emergency.

I don't want boredom to automatically send me looking for a screen.

I don't want convenience to become entitlement.

And I don't want having access to more to make me appreciate what I have any less.

Perhaps that is what growing up without modern convenience gave me: not a better life, but an appreciation for the fact that life doesn't have to be complicated to be good.

Maybe the real luxury is needing less

The older I get, the more I think there is a meaningful difference between having less and needing less.

The first can be something that happens to you.

The second can be something you choose.

You can have plenty of money and still decide that you don't need to buy something simply because it is available.

You can have a successful career and decide that you don't need to work every waking hour.

You can have access to endless entertainment and still allow yourself to be bored.

You can have a beautiful home and still appreciate sitting outside without doing anything.

You can have a full calendar and still protect empty space.

You can have access to almost anything and still recognize that you don't need everything.

That, to me, feels like a much more interesting form of abundance.

Because perhaps wealth isn't only about how much you can acquire.

Perhaps it is also about how little you need in order to feel that your life is full.

And that is something I don't want to lose.

I don't want to go backward. I just want to remember.

I think about this more as I get older because so much of adulthood is about building.

We build careers.

We build businesses.

We build families.

We build homes.

We build wealth.

We build lives that are hopefully more comfortable, more secure, and more expansive than the ones we started with.

And I think we should.

There is nothing wrong with wanting more opportunity, more financial security, more freedom, or more comfort. There is nothing wrong with ambition.

But somewhere in all that building, I think we have to remember what we're building for.

If we spend our entire lives pursuing freedom but never allow ourselves to feel free, what exactly have we built?

If we work endlessly to create more time but never protect any of it, what was the point?

If we accumulate enough money to eventually enjoy life but keep postponing enjoyment until some future version of ourselves, when does life actually begin?

Maybe the goal isn't to reject convenience.

Maybe it is simply to make sure we don't become so dependent on it that we forget how to live without it.

Maybe the goal isn't to have less.

Maybe it is to appreciate more.

Maybe it isn't to stop building.

Maybe it is to remember to look up while we're building.

Because sometimes the things we spend our lives working toward are remarkably simple.

A little more time.

A little more freedom.

A little more connection.

A little more quiet.

A little more presence.

A beach.

A sunset.

An afternoon with the people we love.

And perhaps the irony of modern life is that we can spend decades accumulating money, success, and convenience in order to eventually buy our way back to something that was never particularly complicated in the first place:

the ability to appreciate a simple life.

Maybe that is one of the unexpected gifts of growing up before everything was convenient.

You learn early that you don't need much to have a good day.

And if you can carry that lesson with you even after you have the ability to afford almost anything, perhaps that is a kind of wealth worth having.