I am not a patient man. I know it. My lack of patience is much the same as the other emotions and character traits that are common to us all. Most human qualities exist on a type of spectrum along which a turning point exists. Toughness of mind is positive until it descends into stubbornness, creativity flourishes until a turn to madness appears. Patience proceeds in a healthy manner until it flips to cowardice or ennui. Most qualities are reversible…good for us until they are not.
Non-resistance to evil does not come easily. Today, I was in the grocery shifting my weight from foot to foot as the checker picked up, considered and scanned every item of the person in front of me. Her pace was glacial and her focus on any type of customer service was non -existant. After 10 minutes she began speaking to a co-worker with a bunch of celery poised in her hand. We had miraculously reached the halfway point of her transaction.
Clerks also want to share the state of their dog’s health. the progression of their cystic growths and the time that their shift ends. For a long while I survived this ordeal with a modicum of patience. I even remembered a line from Shakespeare, ” I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.” It did not last.
When she yelled out, “where’s Matt?” I quickly responded with, “nobody cares…ring up the groceries.” My poor wife was embarrassed and the service got markedly worse after any outburst. This caused me to ask some questions, chief of which were, “how much of this crap should I have to put up with?-and- why couldn’t I stand the incompetence? Certainly, my lack of patience didn’t help the situation a bit. An old English cleric/historian named Thomas Fuller once observed that, “abused patience turns to fury.” I was pissed off, indeed.
Lack of patience has served me as well as patience over the years. Impatience got me college degrees, work successes and much more. Of course, lack of patience has given me wrecked cars, broken relationships and spilled coffee. Where is the sweet spot on the spectrum where one remains engaged with the type of patient endurance that achieves positive results? I am stumped.
I guess I’ll need to be patient to find the answer…you have to be patient to achieve patience. I wonder if I’ll ever figure it out.
Olio Folio 