Hey, Wait a Minute

I am comfortably wrapped in the stage of life where I no longer have Christmas lists, long discomfort about the thing I don’t have or a need to own the next best thing. My wants have neatly converged with my needs and all is well. This is true …mostly.

Every New Year’s Eve my wife and I break out the Waterford toasting glasses and our journals to record the events of the past year and the vision for the next. For the last 15 years, I am faced withe the fact that I do want something. PATIENCE.

As I wonder why I have so little of this essential element, certain thoughts come to mind. The most basic notion is the cultural influence that leaches in to all our lives. Recently we are in a long discussion of the influence of the patriarchy on our daily lives. Everyone cites the negative-and insidious -influence that toxic masculinity has on the lives of women. True… but it poisons men’s lives as well. We are taught to be leaders, stoic and driven, the people who never tolerate second place, or a poorly cooked dinner. We are served a stew of discontent mixed with competition instead of a more nourishing dish of calm intelligence and ironclad life-affirming stubborness.

We are unaccustomed to patient endurance and encouraged to go for the quick score and the instant gratification that is the foundation of our society. We have no need for compassion or long suffering effort toward a goal. Anger and anxiety ensues.

Or doing is not the experimental activity of a true scholar it is often a manic drive toward a goal we have not really tested for its worthiness. We are not as integrated as, say, Leonardo da Vinci who fully understood the tension between talk and action. Da Vinci puts it like this: “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”Do what?

I think we are counseled to think and move with the stubborn determination we often call patience. Like the great scientist we reject impulse and act in a sober-and hopefully creative-way. I talked to a buddhist monk once who shared his life principle with me he said it simply, “don’t just do something…sit there.” Learn patience and sober effort and good things will come from it.

Every once in a while, I think I’m getting some patience; then I have to drive somewhere and the opposite immediately asserts its truth. I hope that I will have some.

Someday.