Ever since it was delivered, my computer has been trying to teach me patience. The space bar does not always seem to work, especially if you happen to catch it on the edge and not press firmly in the middle, and I don’t always seem to hold the shift button down long enough when capitalizing. So these two occurrences make me have to take a little more time, or at least pay a bit more attention to what I’m doing. Some day I’ll post an uncorrected blog just so you can see what I’m talking about.
Anyone who has known me for a long enough time will understand that both A) I should learn some patience and B) the computer is ultimately wasting its time. That has been tempered somewhat with age, but certainly not as much as I would hope. By any measurable standard I am about as impatient as they come. I don’t like surprises, not because I don’t like being surprised but because I don’t like waiting for them. Want to drive me nuts? Tell me you have something for me but you’re not giving it to me until later. I’ll hound you like a rabid lost puppy. Even rambling conversations and long drawn out stories make me insane-just get to the point!! And I get very easily frustrated with anything that I think is taking longer than it should.
The problem with impatience is that it leads to rash action and impulsive behavior, the results of which are usually more detrimental than had I just taken a deep breath at the beginning. Part of what compounds the impatience in a bizarre catch-22ish situation is I recognize how simple it is to just take a deep breath or two, relax myself and focus. And the fact that I know it is so easy and yet I can’t seem to do it only frustrates me more!
There are probably some psychological issues, or something from one’s upbringing, that make certain people more impatient than others, but at the core of it all, it is an issue of focusing one’s energy. When a person is acting rashly, their energy is scattered, going off in a million different directions. But if a person can focus that energy there, during the toughest of situations, then they can do that with other times in the life. The rash behavior of an impatient person is only the farthest out there demonstration of unfocused energy. I know, because that’s me. I come home and just toss my keys wherever. I check mail and then just drop it. In the middle of cleaning the living room, I decide to read a magazine. It’s like I’m an old and horrible inefficient refrigerator, with my energy just haphazardly leaking everywhere.
I got to thinking about all of this this morning while watching soccer. The soccer I played as a child-22 kids chasing the ball-is nothing like how soccer should be played. The ball is passed forward and backwards, kicked sideways 30 yards across the field to where nobody is when the ball is kicked, but soon to be populated with a team mate who knows just when to be there. In setting up their offense, a team will sometimes move the ball 40 or 50 yards down the field in the wrong direction before moving it forward, taking the time for the players to get into position.
The most eye-popping of this occurs when a team is in front of the net trying to score and the defensive team gets the ball on its foot. Now, if I were that guy, I’d blindly kick that ball anywhere that I could, just happy to have stopped the current scoring attempt and obviously not too concerned with where the ball ended up. But these guys take the time (at least as much time as they can) to dribble the ball and set up just where they need to kick the ball. They are not just trying to clear it-although sometimes that is all they can do-but they are working to set up their offense and make sure it is their teammate who get to the ball and not the opponent.
Think about it. Soccer is typically such a low scoring game that one goal can be the difference. Here you are, maybe only ten or so yards from in front of your own net. You’ve got the ball on your foot and a half dozen guys wearing a different color shirt than yours bearing down on you trying to take it away. Even the littlest of mistakes here on your part will almost certainly result in the other team scoring. What do you do? I already told you whet I would-close my eyes and kick like hell, just like I always have.
What I need to do is learn from these players. They can do what they do because they have faith in their ability and knowledge of what they can accomplish, so they focus, they commit to what they know they can do, and then they go and do it. It’s easy to panic, to have a knee jerk reaction to what’s going on, to act impatiently. Sometimes it’s hard to see the big picture, to take the time and see what is really possible, but if you want to get to your goal, that’s exactly what you need to do. When you focus your energy, and put your faith in yourself and your abilities, the patience will grow. It’s just like what Kipling wrote in the first lines of his most famous poem-“If you can keep your when all about you are losing theirs”.
So I work with this, struggle with it, some days more successfully than others, and I take some comfort with the days that I feel I’m making progress. Like everything else I know that, ironically, it’ll take time. I just need to be patient with it.
PopcornJackTerry 