Elusive Patience

Lessons Learned

Patience

Who’s in the waiting room at the doctor’s office? Patients.  What does it take to wait for something? Patience. How do you learn to be patient? By waiting. That being said, what is a character quality dangerously close to becoming extinct in today’s society? Patience. Why, in a world where we strive to have it all, does this patience quality remain so desperately elusive? Why are we so unapologetically and unflatteringly  impatient? Tragically, we’ve handily passed this immaturity on to our children and its obnoxious effects run rampant through classrooms, summer camps, athletic teams, and most gatherings. Impatience has become the MO when we disagree, when we feel inconvenienced, when we’ve been embarrassed, when we do not know what else to do with our frustration, when we do not get what we want when we want it; impatience has become our temper tantrum and it’s driven by insecurity and selfishness. Impatience drives up blood pressure, destroys relationships, looks foolish, and demonstrates a gross lack of self-control. Why do we so automatically choose this impatience over and over and over again? I simply do not understand this.  I am a teacher, a mother, a wife, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend, and through these valued relationships I have never found impatience to be an effective means by which to teach, learn, listen, give, care, or share.  Impatience de-values. Impatience degrades. Impatience decides that I am more important than you. Sad. That is just tremendously sad. That anyone would choose I, me, and my above you or we truly reflects the empty, lonely heart that prefers walls to bridges.  We can turn this Titanic around, however, but not without a willingness to wait, to listen, to forgo the last word, to surrender first place, to lay down my will, and to deliberately choose calmness, the greater good, the dream of someone else, a quiet voice, a gentle answer, peace. We can do this. We can teach this to our children. We can be patient. And by practicing patience, we will heal our hearts, heal our relationships, and heal our land.