God Grant Me Patience (and I want it RIGHT NOW!)

The title of this post is one of my favorite light-hearted reflections on patience, because I recognize the value of being patient, but I am not generally a patient person.

From the outside, I may appear to be a patient person. Indeed, I do my best to be courteous and gracious and tactful, and I recognize that the world does not operate on Lucy Claire Curran’s Ideal Timeline (more’s the pity—it’s a great timeline!), but there’s nothing like getting stuck behind text-checking amblers on a city sidewalk to get my blood pressure to spike nice and quick. Nowhere is my impatience more obvious than when it comes to my relationship with myself and my work, where my vision, ambitions, and ideas nearly always outstrip where I am in my life by a few leagues. (Maybe I need to get me a pair of those Seven League Boots I’ve heard about!)

In any event, the point of this post is not to simply be cheeky (and hilarious! Am I right??), but rather to share my thoughts on the virtues of patience as an ongoing practice. A while back, I shared one of my favorite quotes of all time on my Instagram. It’s a quote by Wayne Shorter, and it goes like this:

 “The long way is the short way.”

The truth of it is (and I want to be clear that I have to remind myself of this basically every single day because I still want to jet ahead and skip all the boring stuff in the here and now so I can get to the good part with all the glitter and awards and success) that the shortest route to where I want to be is found by slowing down and taking things step by step in the here and now. If I approach my work slowly, thoroughly, well, and patiently today and tomorrow, I will get where I want to go faster.

In other words, if I practice patience, I have to be patient for a shorter amount of time!

One of my good friends (who I will not name, but we’ve known each other since 4^th grade and she’s good at giving me a hard time, and I bet she will recognize herself in the post) used to tease me about my propensity for walking from bus stop to bus stop in the direction I was headed because I so hated waiting for the bus. I do my best to take public transportation here in the Bay Area, for both environmental and economical reasons, and I also appreciate that the population that rides Muni and BART is diverse and I get to connect with people from all walks of life. The wiser part of me also recognizes that taking public transportation forces me to be a bit more organized in getting to places on time and also gives me plenty of opportunities to practice flexibility and patience. For those of you who have taken public transportation in the Bay Area, you know that buses and trains come sort of on time most of the time, and that fellow riders often provide opportunities to practice patience. (Lol!)

Photo credit: image gratefully borrowed from mazeo on openclipart.com

In any event, though I was committed to riding public transportation as much as possible, I really disliked waiting at bus stops. I would get antsy and impatient, and after checking to make sure that I had enough time to walk to the next bus stop before the bus arrived, I would take off speed-walking and arrive at the next bus stop out of breath, still antsy, and somehow even more miffed that the bus was taking so long.

“I just don’t like waiting,” I explained to my friend who was ribbing me about it. “And I like waking. Walking is good for you. I don’t mind waking, and it feels better to keep moving.”

“Whatever, Lucy,” see said, giving me a look, (which, for the record, was not a very patient look.)

However, more than once, I would get overly ambitious and try to walk one stop too many…and I would miss my bus.

The irony was deafening.

I was in such a hurry to keep on moving towards my destination that I let myself be motivated by my impatience and thus created more waiting for myself and postponed my arrival even longer.

Food for Thought:

• How do you relate to your long-term goals in terms of how you are managing and structuring your time and your schedule? Are you able to keep your eye on the prize while also taking care of the work that’s right here in front of you in a practical, methodical, and patient manner?
• Do you ever let your impatience get in the way such that you end up creating more work for yourself?
• Can you be gentle and kind with yourself when you are feeling impatient, and strengthen your patience muscles so that you are using your time and energy strategically and wisely?

Photo credit: image gratefully borrowed from Technaturally on openclipart.org. 

Patience isn’t fun, but it’s honestly the fastest way.

Practicing patience with yourself, those around you, and also the pace of your life as it unfolds is a good strategy when you’re building toward a long-term vision.

Remember: “The long way is the short way.”

Wayne Shorter totes knew what he was talking about!*

*As a completely pointless and punny aside, I always want to revise this to say that “the long way is the Shorter way!”