Daily Mood Quote - January 6, 2012

Daily Mood Quote

Day 232 – January 6, 2012

All men commend patience, although few are willing to practice it.

~Thomas Kempis

I have been a mom, a “parent” for 27 years and one thing that has changed in me for the better is my level of patience. Granted, it took the reading of many books on parenting, patience, motivation etc... to get here, but I did. Okay, there are some days (menopause related) where my patience, or lack there of can be embarrassing. We all have them, but it's when we exhibit impatience on a regular basis that can land us in trouble. As my husband would say, “on average you've become a really patient person.” Let me explain: In the world I grew up in, my family wasn't really known for their patience. Instant gratification, rage and anger was usually how things were handled, with the notable exception of my father (I'll circle back to him later). It was like living with a welfare version of a daily soap opera. Everything was a drama, every problem was somebody else's fault and everything must have been some kind of conspiracy. All of which was of course balderdash and really quite exhausting.

As I grew, I watched how this lifestyle generated far more problems than it ever solved and so I decided that I would not be like that. It was a conscious decision turned into an emotion driven cause. Twenty eight years ago, when I realized that I would soon be having a child, I furthered that cause by reading everything I could on being a parent. And wonder of wonder, they all said basically the same thing, love, patience and consistency. Okay, that's an area where aside from my Navy job, I had zero experience. I had to learn and apply a whole new set of skills, they are still a work in progress. I think patience is a lifetime learning curve and no matter who you are, its something that must be consciously applied daily to take root and grow. Some people, like my father, whom my husband says is “the most patient man he ever met,” start with a bit more patience. If you knew my mother, you would understand. They have a natural gift of letting life’s issues roll off them like water off a duck's back. That gift of natural patience however, is not given to all and the rest of us have to consciously apply the brakes, when life gets rolling. That's me.

In the instant gratification and hurry up world of today, patience seems to be becoming something of a lost art. But, it is necessary to really gain, or develop anything of true and lasting value. The old saying goes, “Rome wasn't built in a day” may be a bit understated. It is still being built and rebuilt some 2,700 years after things started coming together on the isthmus. That is real patience and it's something we need to remember to employ as we forge ahead into the future. The internet, for better or worse, has made an unbelievable amount of information, some true and a surprising amount of random fiction, available to everyone, all the time. Digital communities spring to life in days and sometime hours, but they lack the foundations that true communities need. The shared effort and sacrifice over time is the glue that bind communities and cultures together for the long haul. The children of the digital age lack that kind of perspective and I fear that they will not have the staying power, the patience, to make real and lasting positive change, or decisions as history unfolds. I hope I'm wrong here, only time (no matter if you believe in the concept or not) will tell.

The point is, I believe, that like anything of real and lasting value, patience and its rewards are earned not given and impatience is usually rewarded with things going astray. I have seen on the news case after case of everything from auto wrecks to CEOs and NFL coaches and managers being kicked to the curb (even if they were doing a good job and the right thing), due to lack of patience in our society. This trend “can only lead to tears” (thanks Bartok the bat from the movie Anastasia). The zero to hero back to zero curve has gotten too short for real positive and lasting change to take hold. The same is true in our political arena, where presidents are judged on whether they can solve decades old social and political issues in the first two years of their administrations. As they say on the ESPN Monday Night Live, NFL football show... “C'mon man!” Lack of patience is a key component in allowing those issues to continue, as we continually play musical chairs with the people at the top, while leaving the same old perpetuators, or should I say perpetrators, in the House and Senate, because we are too impatient to do some research and choose our candidates based on that; instead of name recognition and some vague promise to “make things better.” For them maybe, but really not for the people who were foolish enough to just push button “A” because its there.

No patience equals no reward. That's just the way it is. There is so much more to say about patience, but like life and patience itself, it will have to come in time.

How will you build patience today?

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Thank you for reading