C’mon, Patience! Hurry Up!

It has come to my attention that patience may be the most important skill to have.  If you learn it early, you can kickstart your way into a successful adulthood, whatever your specific goals may be.  Even if you learn it later in life, as I am struggling to do, it can drastically change your outlook and decision-making capabilities.  I am still in shock over something so incredibility easy to explain can make a profound difference in your life. 

            Of course it eluded me for my entire life.

            The odd thing about patience is that there is more going on under the hood.  To embrace it is to embrace other aspects of life. I’m confident in saying that not a single strand of my DNA set me up to have a healthy amount of patience.  My parents didn’t have it, it wasn’t in the culture I grew up around, and it never presented itself as a reaction to any of these aspects of my life.  East coast people are typically less patient, and the stress of anxiety is no help. Short fuses. Bickering. 

            So, in the short term, I was easily agitated.  In the long term, I was prone to breakdowns and quitting altogether instead of toughing it out.  All of these things were possibilities and realities for me.

            However, this late in my life, I need it.  I require it to continue forward. Between my last job and during the search for a new one, I am driving for Lyft. The stress level is low, but patience is essential to both deal with people and primarily negotiate traffic without losing my shit.  Seems easy, but you don’t realize how much you react to other drivers until you are forced not to.  It is…challenging.

            But the true need for patience comes from the job hunt itself.  This is something almost everyone can relate to.  Searching for a job, especially when it is the start of a new career, requires grade A, major league, top tier patience.  My body chemistry has none.  It is completely driven by my brain, which continues to persuade my nervous system that the process takes an unknown amount of time. It’s like driving a team of wild horses.  You are focused on keeping them in line the best you can to move forward.  Your hands have a death grip on the reins, and you can’t take your eyes off of them for a second. 

            Something like that.

            The reason that naturally impatient people can’t turn it around is the fact that life is mostly disappointing. The design of our civilization is not conducive to righting the focus of the impatience person. Success is often not guaranteed.  Success is not often rewarded.  Success is not often success. Also, poor people grow up with the philosophy of ‘enjoy it while you can’ and ‘you can lose it all at any time’ and a dozen other negative platitudes that resist patience.  I’m not saying these ideas are even false, but they aren’t meant to help you stick it out.

            Patience, as I see it, is the acceptance of a few intangibles.  Confidence, competence, and surprisingly, hope. 

            Confidence that you can reach your destination. Competence, so that once you get there, you will belong there.  And hope.  Hope is just about everything, isn’t it?  Hope is the light shone within the darkness of fear.  Hope is one foot in front of the other.  Hope is the blue lightsaber drawn against the red one.

            Embracing patience is embracing hope.  I will get this done.  I will survive this.  There is a point somewhere in the future where this current bullshit will end and I will be past it.

            I’m a hopeful person anyway.  I’ve just never linked it to patience.  Depression, self-esteem, other life garbage…it got in the way. Once I had that click, patience was reachable.  I felt the world slow down and each day was both bigger and smaller at the same time.  Every single thing that has ever been accomplished was done day by day.  How could I be any different?  In fact, I might not even need that much patience after all.

            I’m hopeful.