Patience. This thing that we need to face challenges and is so often in short supply. When do you have it? When do I need it and not have it? What is it anyway?
Teaching someone a new skill, we know they don't know the process. We know their fingers won't have the dexterity that comes with practice. We intend to take our time and bring them along step by step, patiently.
Rarely, one walk through and the person gets it. More often, the second time they try they forget one step, have to ask for help. If they don't ask right away, we have to walk them back to see what went wrong. If it happens a few times and takes us a while to find the mistake, "How did you miss that step?" comes out of our mouths. Patience is frayed.
When we have to go over the same step twenty times, when it is clear that this is challenging to them, we can wish that they would give up. The twenty-first time we point out the same button on the computer we do not sound patient at all.
When someone is upset, we know we need to sit down and take our time to get them calmed down, to comfort them. But we want to know what is wrong. We want to speak the right words and get them comforted. The story, however, may ramble. They'll get close to the point and shy away. If they can't get words out at all, we can hold their hand, rub their shoulder, wait. If they just sit in silence, we get uncomfortable just sitting with them. When we want to fix things, it is hard to wait.
Growth is seldom straightforward. A child matures, masters certain skills, contains their emotions, then along with a physical growth spurt, they lose all the co-ordination they gained. While they are frustrated, impatient, we get the effect of a changing body. But they also lose the hard-won control of their emotions, and that frustrates us. When we forget the natural ebb and flow of growth, we find it hard to be patient.
Some impatience comes from the need to be somewhere else. Some comes from the desire to do something else. Sometimes our lack of patience is driven by how long it takes for what we are working for to arrive.
But some comes from the fear that what we hope for will not come at all. Once it arrives, we can stop worrying. Until then, we try to hurry ahead to make sure we don't miss out on what we are waiting for.
With important goals, we work with as much focus as we can muster, with all the skill we can devote to it, giving the task the time we expect it will take. When the goal remains out of reach, it is painful. We become impatient.
Which is why I am beginning to think that patience is not about being able to wait.
The person who struggles with learning needs attention, a guiding hand that does not step in too soon. The person who talks around their problem needs someone who will sit with them for long enough, can eventually ask questions that point the way to the heart of the matter. Looking at problems in the world, we need to face the work that change requires with attentive determination.
Right now, we are waiting--with frustration or with some measure of patience--for the day that restrictions will be eased. But patience isn't all we need. We need to hold on to the hopes we have for what we will do in that moment.
To guide us forward, we have to think about the needs can we meet then that we cannot address right now. What do we hope we learned in this different time that we want to carry with us? What habits have we developed from this different rhythm that we want to carry forward?
In a way, waiting is easier than being patient. Patience calls us to accept what is and engage in a willingness to take the journey step by step towards what we dream.
Cathy Hird lives on the ever-changing shore of Georgian Bay
