Short vs Long Term Gratification: A Discussion of Length

Length is a polarizing subject. From the metric system’s use of centimeters to our high maintenance regard for both feet and inches to describe height, length can be both bad and good. Cutting the length of the written word means making edits that equates with clarity and a conciseness. It means foregoing embellishment, which can be hyperbolic. The prefix hyper- signifies an elaboration, a superfluous amount, and an overall imbalance. Too much length means wordiness. Too much length means having to go to a tailor to get some article of clothing hemmed. And yet when it comes to gratification, it is the long-term type that is heralded. Those kids, who have the wherewithal to sit in front of a sweet treat without devouring it until they are permitted to, are rewarded.

The saying, life is too short, gives no reason to reprimand these very same obedient children. Shouldn’t we seek the short-term gratification? Is the short-term always simply an easy-fix or garnered through some unsavory means that may be illegal?

I’ll never forget going to see and sit with my grandmother during her chemotherapy. My mother came along. I was in graduate school at the time and this was during the nascent stages of not yet diagnosed anorexia. I had not eaten, and my grandmother’s drop in weight and absence of appetite fortified my will power to starve. My mother, thinking I had eaten, did not think twice about my grandmother or me when she whipped out the danish I had purchased for her at one of Manhattan’s antiquated bakeries. I remarked that my mother should not be eating that, to which my grandma replied that life was too short and my mother should eat it freely. I felt betrayed, admittedly, but the truth was that my grandmother was not starving; she had no concept of hunger. I, however, had suppressed the hunger I did have.

The longer I went without eating, the more my biology altered. I had entered survival mode, and I too no longer received cues for hunger and fullness. The longer one remains underweight, the longer the brain’s chemistry is manipulated, and the stronger the grip of the disorder. It felt gratifying to feel empty, but that emptiness was short-lived. In this case, short-term gratification was just that. I sought to feel productive by walking for miles on end and disciplined for going without food, yet in the long-term, my body and mind were impaired, I isolated, and career prospects were bleaker than ever before as a result.

Short-term gratification is considered ill will because one is willing an end to come to fruition without pursuing the means to achieve an end. It’s like applying for an associate-level position without experiencing entry-level. Short-term gratification can also be an abstraction, like having an exponential level of endurance without performing grueling exercises to achieve said stamina. It too can be magical – like attending school, going through the motions and doing as said with effort – but then riding on those coattails of academic achievement without applying that knowledge thereafter.

Short-term gratification is considered an easy way out instead of an efficient way in. The short–term gratification that comes from a power nap or siesta is considered efficient and conducive to priming for optimal productivity. A long slumber, however, is oftentimes considered lazy. Hitting “snooze” on an alarm clock to sleep longer is considered a maladaptive behavior when in fact a lengthier amount of shut-eye could reap a massive turnaround in work productivity. Procrastination is putting off productivity by lengthening the amount of time to perform a task and is therefore oftentimes rebuked as a poor character trait. Yet procrastination seems to be lauded insofar as the saying that goes, good things come to those who wait. This wait is equal to a lengthy amount of time without forcing any type of control over the outcome. This is called patience and is placed on such a pedestal that it is biblical, endowed with mortal sublimity.

Length is also referred to in a crude manner, but we’re all adults here. Attraction and natural bodily functions provide a sense of healthy normalcy. Length can be considered all good and well; at least, that’s what she said, but enough of the sexual innuendos because the point has been made.

Gratification, whether it be short or long, is difficult to come by. So much so that self-help guidance many times advises that a list of gratitude be created in order to remind one’s self that we have more than we have not. The list is a form of short-term gratification. In the moment, one is reminded of possessions that one could otherwise exist without.  In many ways, then, short-term and long-term are neutral entities that belong to a relativity spectrum. One may say it is better to invest in a stock that is on the high, only to have it drop at a later date, in the long-term.  

Or perhaps it is better to apply to college “early action” or “early decision,” in December because your criteria go beyond the standards and there is a smaller pool of applicants. But what about the long-term chance that you can gain admissions to other institutions that provides a choice? You’ll never know, but then again, you likely won’t miss what you never had: relativity. Let’s take rolling admissions. It may seem better to get your application in at the start, when they’re reviewed on a first-come, first-serve basis, however, waiting for a longer term may provide one with extra careful revision of the materials that can substantially improve the quality of one’s application and thereby improving one’s chances. 

Short-term versus long-term length is a quandary that many people base their life’s choices on and favoring one over the other according to societal perceptions conjured from what is likely trial and error of different scenarios. Short-term may refer to a percentage of time – what’s two hours out of twenty-four? Well, that’s a twelfth of the day and while that may seem like a slice of time, it can also be chock full of traumatic moments. Imagine running through the gamut of exercises for an hour, much less two. Imagine how fatigued the body may feel only minutes in. Short and long lengths of time are so polarizing in that they can discern between those who can run for miles, like marathoners, from those who do not run and prefer to walk. Yet short and long lengths of time are so universally regarded as right and wrong that society homogeneously coalesces around things like procrastination being bad yet power naps being efficient.

In my last essay I spoke to the righteousness of long hair – how it proved vitality in its growth and strength in its protein-laden strand. Yet long hair can also prove to be a false sense of security or an appendage depended on. That being said, long hair can be like catnaps – they help to power us through tasks. Perhaps the hair boosted confidence and provided a shroud to hide behind had in some ways helped one to perform a seemingly insurmountable task.

When it comes to life, longevity can be considered a blessing and a curse. Many believe they would not want to outlive their kin if they were to live for a long time. Still, we study Blue Zones, the sites around the globe that have the highest index of the longest living humans. There is a cookbook that critically assesses the dietary intake of these people and their way of life, as if it could be a paradigm for those humans living outside of the zones who want to live as long as they possibly can. Living forever, or immortality, is an impossibility and is considered by most to be blasphemous, or even a way of cheating the human race and some other divine power. Living forever cannot be characterized as long because it is not tethered to a concept of time.

Short and long are definite timetables. They describe that which is finite. Length is finite. It is not necessary to subscribe to short-term or long-term. Perhaps this is where size does matter insofar as if there is anything we can learn from pant sizes, it is that varying lengths like short, regular, and tall, are a testament to the inadequacy of length as a measure of anything but society’s peripheral vision because even the numerical is subject to standards.