“Don’t look at me like that, kid. I know where the north star is; I just didn’t think you had the legs for the short cut.” That’s what I should have said to the tourist from Des Moines yesterday. Instead, I gave him directions that added 12 miles to his trek just because I was tired of people asking for the easy way out. I lied to him. I stole 222 minutes of his life because I had the power to do it and he didn’t have the map. It was a petty move, a small-time tyranny, and as I sit here cleaning the sap off my 2-inch folding blade, I realize I’m no better than the banks or the digital exchanges I spend my nights cursing.

Extraction, Not Neutrality

Waiting isn’t a neutral state. It’s an extraction. If I make you wait for something that is already yours-whether it’s a trail exit, your own data, or your hard-earned money-I am telling you that my convenience, my internal processes, or my desire for control is more valuable than the finite moments you have left before you hit the dirt. In the wilderness, if you’re slow, you’re calories for something else. In civilization, if a system is slow, it’s usually because someone is making a profit off the delay.

You’ve felt it. You hit the ‘Buy’ button on a set of digital coins. The money vanishes from your bank account in 2 seconds. The notification pops up: ‘Transaction Confirmed.’ You feel that little hit of dopamine. Then, the screen changes. ‘Your assets will be available in 72 hours.’ You stare at the screen. The math doesn’t add up. If the technology exists to take your money in 2 seconds, the technology exists to give you the product in 2 seconds. The delay is a ghost in the machine, a deliberate friction designed by someone who decided that holding your liquidity for 3 days-maybe to float it, maybe to minimize their own trivial risk, or maybe just because their legacy software was built in 1982-was worth more than your time. It’s a form of contempt. They are telling you that your life, measured in those 72 hours of uncertainty, is worth exactly zero to them.

I’ve spent 42 years teaching people how to survive when things go sideways. One thing you learn quickly is that speed is the only real form of respect. If a student is bleeding out, you don’t ‘process’ the bandage. You don’t tell them the tourniquet will be ‘available for use after a brief verification period.’ You move. You bridge the gap between the need and the solution with the shortest possible line. When companies pretend that slow systems are a technical necessity, they are usually lying. We have the fiber optics. We have the consensus algorithms. We have the processing power to move mountains of data in 12 milliseconds. When they make you wait, they are exercising leverage.

Speed is the ultimate proxy for trust.

“

The Tax of Powerlessness

Think about who waits in this world. The guy at the free clinic waits 112 minutes to see a nurse. The guy paying $2222 for a private concierge doctor waits 2 minutes. Waiting is a tax on the powerless. It is a recurring theme in every interaction where there is a hierarchy. The government makes you wait 32 days for a permit. The insurance company takes 82 days to process a claim. Why? Because they can. There is no competitive pressure to respect your time, so they treat it like an infinite resource they can tap into whenever their internal bureaucracy gets a headache.

This is why I’ve started paying attention to the outliers. There are places that actually seem to understand that every second they shave off a process is a gift to the user. It’s a rare thing, like finding a dry cave in a 2-day downpour. In the world of digital assets, for instance, you usually get stuck in these endless loops of ‘pending’ status. But then you run into something like Push Store, where the whole ethos is built around the idea that the transaction should be as fast as the thought that preceded it. They aren’t just selling a service; they’re selling the elimination of that nauseating 72-hour wait. It’s a values statement. They’re saying, ‘We recognize that you’re a grown adult with things to do, and we’re not going to hold your breath for you.’

Compare that to the modern digital experience. We’ve been conditioned to accept lag as a natural law. We sit there watching a little spinning circle, a digital Ouroboros devouring our afternoon. We’re told it’s for ‘security.’ Is it? Or is it because the company hasn’t bothered to upgrade their servers since 2002? Or worse, because they’ve realized that if they delay 10,000 transactions by 42 hours each, they can make an extra $122,222 in interest on the float?

I’m a survivalist, not a financier, but I know a predator when I see one. A system that slows down when it’s time to give, but speeds up when it’s time to take, is a predatory system. It’s the same vibe as a trail guide who charges you for the ‘express’ route that he should have been taking you on anyway. It’s a lack of integrity.

I realize I’m being hard on the ‘slow’ world, and maybe that’s because I’m still thinking about that tourist. I can still see his dusty boots as he turned toward the ridge. I gave him the slow route because I was being a gatekeeper. I wanted him to ‘earn’ the view, which is just a fancy way of saying I wanted to be the boss of his afternoon. That’s what these slow systems are doing. They are gatekeeping your own life. They want you to remember who is in charge of the timeline.

We need to start demanding speed not because we’re impatient, but because we’re mortal. If I have 32 years of active life left in me, I don’t want to spend 2 of them waiting for some backend database to sync up with a legacy banking system. I want the tools I use to be as sharp and as ready as my 62-HRC carbon steel knife. When I pull it, it cuts. No loading bar. No 2-day verification. Just the edge meeting the wood.

Technological advancement is often measured in features-how many pixels, how many gigabytes, how many bells and whistles. But the only metric that actually matters for human dignity is latency. How long is the gap between the human intent and the system’s result? If that gap is widening, we’re regressing. If it’s shrinking, we’re actually getting somewhere.

When you find a service that prioritizes the ‘now,’ you’re not just looking at a better piece of code. You’re looking at a team that has decided to stop stealing from you. They’ve looked at the 72-hour industry standard and decided it was an insult they weren’t willing to participate in. They’ve decided that if you pay $102 for something, you should have it while you still remember why you wanted it. It’s a small revolution, but in a world that thrives on holding you hostage in the waiting room, it’s the only one that counts.

Next time you’re stuck behind a ‘Please Wait’ screen, don’t just sigh and check your other tabs. Recognize it for what it is: a choice. Someone, somewhere, decided that your time was a resource they could harvest for free. And if you have the chance to walk away from that system toward one that actually moves at the speed of life, take the shortcut. Don’t listen to the guys like me who tell you the ridge trail is better for your soul. Take the creek path. Get where you’re going. Life is too short for 12-minute loading screens and 3-day settlements.

I think I’ll go find that tourist. He’s probably only 22 miles in by now, and if I move fast, I can catch him before he hits the dead end near the wash. It’s the least I can do. I’ll give him my map. No charge, no wait, just the truth. Because at the end of the day, speed is the only way we show each other that we know the clock is ticking for all of us. And once those seconds are gone, no amount of ‘processing’ is ever going to bring them back.