Patience

Nature does not hurry yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu

My mom used to always say, “Patience is a virtue”.

I really didn’t understand what she meant by that at the time. I just thought it was another dumb saying that parents used to annoy their kids. I don’t know about your parents, but mine had a lot of those. Maybe I should mention here that I may or may not have used most of them on my kids too.

Patience is quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence. Doesn’t sound really complicated, right? We need patience in all areas of our life, especially with ourselves. Like most other things, it’s easier to give to others than to ourselves. I feel like overall I’m pretty patient. I don’t always like being patient though. I want everything ‘yesterday’. I want to hurry through and get to the next thing. Having patience when I’m behind a slow driver is really difficult.

Here are a few places that the P word has shown up in my life lately.

I am becoming more aware and having patience instead of jumping to conclusions and making up stories in my head about people and situations. Having the patience for all the information to come so I don’t have to make up stories makes life a lot easier. I am learning to let patience fill the gap between what I know and what I don’t know. Being impatient can cause the gap to be filled with made-up scenarios that we start believing. And, oh how the stories can grow! Have you ever done that only to find out that the explanation was very simple and the story you made up was way off? I for sure have!

If I become impatient with someone, I give them space. I know that the impatience is there for me to see something about myself. It’s not about the other person. I am patient with myself while I get clear on what it is I can see differently about the person. This has saved me many regrets and from feeling guilty for doing or saying something I wish I hadn’t.

Patience doesn’t mean that you give up and do nothing. On the contrary, it’s a time to be open to new ideas and information. What if instead, you fill your time with curiosity about what you don’t know instead of focusing on things not happening fast enough?

Virtue is a particular moral excellence; a good or admirable quality. I think my mom was right. Patience is most definitely an admirable quality. It doesn’t come natural to all of us. We can however, practice patience. We get plenty of opportunities to do that every day!

Patience is acceptance that things don’t have to happen like you think they do.

When we change the world changes.