A Painful Virtue

Patience is a virtue, right?

I must not be virtuous because for some reason, patience and I have always been strangers. It’s not something I do well at… you might say that I tend to view the world with a short lens. I feel like time is fleeting and that everything needs to be done now.

I can’t quite explain where this feeling of immediacy comes from. I can’t even begin to guess…

OK, that’s not entirely true. I can wager a guess. I’m willing to bet that it has more to do with my childhood.

Regardless, I’m no good with patience. I would like things to happen right now… and that’s just not how it works.

The sad part is, knowing that doesn’t make it any easier. In some ways, it makes things more frustrating.

While other people are allowed to go and play and do whatever they want, I have to sit and wait. I have to be patient. I have to wait out some arbitrary clock with a time limit that I can’t even see.

Maybe that’s the problem. If I know a timeframe, I can wait it out. Even if it’s something that hurts me, I can wait until it ends. That’s not necessarily the problem (though if it is something that hurts me, I will be sad about it). The problem is not knowing. Knowing something is going to come, but not when isn’t exactly comfortable…

You might say it’s the opposite of that. It’s frustrating. It’s annoying. It makes me want to do any number of things but be patient.

Yet, here I am. Needing to be patient.

So, how do I fix this?

I honestly don’t know. I would like to think that I can try to fix something that’s been a life-long problem. I know I can’t. If I could, I would have done so a while ago.

So, how does one learn patience when it’s never been a strong suit? How does one learn to wait when we live in a have it now society?

This is the real conundrum. One in which I believe answers are few and far between and will become increasingly more so as we get to a more immediate gratification world.

After all, there are things worth waiting for in this world. Careers, people… they are worth waiting and working for. It’s just a matter of learning how to do so.