How the fuck does one learn patience? (I'm actually not that angry about it. I just like the way the f-bomb implies that I'm impatient about learning to be patient. I love using the word "fuck". It's the Swiss army knife of words: it's a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction, everything. In fact, if my entire blog was made up of the word "fuck", it would probably be grammatically correct.). But I digress...
I am not patient. I wish to hell I was. My interaction with our intersubjective world would go a whole lot smoother. (That line reminds me of Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused when, confronted with a freshman not bearing weed, he states "you'd be a whole lot cooler if you did...") When I expect something, time expands. Seconds are minutes. I am patient in relation to my new perspective of time, but certainly not to everyone else's.
At first glance, impatience seems to expose a love for the present. I have no interest in future gratification. The present is king. On further inspection, however, it is the opposite. When I can't wait for something, I am focussing my attention on the future. I am not or have not what I want. The present is in fact distasteful. This also works for those things that we don't look forward to. I'm in Mexico right now and have zero interest in going home tomorrow. The possibility of a future event (there's that damn probability crap getting in the way, affecting my actions despite it not being a real entity) alters my respect for and attention to the present.
Time and the present have obvious and enormous implications in death and disease. Both are inevitable and, as Ernest Becker suggests in his book Denial of Death, the knowledge of this possibility (the probability being 100% on a long enough timeline) constantly affects our self consciousness. The inevitability of my death - which, I would argue, I have infinite patience for (against?) in that I hope to forever avoid it - alters my respect for the present.
Back to the question, though, how the fuck does one learn patience? Seriously. I'm asking you. I have no idea. In fact, I don't have the patience for this fuc...
My friend - Not long ago I had a resident thank me for my patience (I think I let them struggle with lines longer than Georges usually does.) I was taken aback - patience has never been one of my vices. I realized that what they perceived as patience was an improvement in my ability to (occasionally) mask my deep, gnawing impatience. That's the best some of us can hope for.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry I can't help - I didn't make it to the end of your post.
ReplyDeleteConsistent distraction mistaken for attention
ReplyDeleteOR
Buddha-like joy in each moment for its own transitory existence
OR
"give-up" as chloe says because you can't move faster than you are so stop trying
"Said woman take it slow
ReplyDeleteIt'll work itself out fine
All we need is just a little patience"
GNR
Implicit in patience, at least when it is considered a virtue, is the promise of a greater reward in the future then would be obtained now. I think that's an easier thing to grasp as an adult, then it was as a child. As a five year old boy, if you had given me the choice of option A now, or a much better, bigger option B later, I would have taken option A and immediately began conniving how I would get option B also. Now though, through experience and the demands of societal constraints, I have become aware of the benefits of patience. A Superego controls my ID. I don't push to the front of the line at Costco because I don't want everyone there to think I'm a complete asshole. Similarly, medical school and residency was a model of patience, knowing (assuming) that a big payoff would come if I were patient. But when I think of what it means to be patient, when it truly impacted my life, I am brought back to childhood and the excruciating, visceral pain that I endured waiting for Christmas. Like most kids my age, Christmas season began in September when the Sears catalogue arrived. For days I picked apart the toy section of the catalogue (clothes, tools, home & garden? are you fucking kidding me?), figuring out the ideal formula that would deliver the most out of our modest $25 budget. Then came the obsession period, as I thought, dreamed and acted out playing with the spoils that were to be mine. Christmas came, but never soon enough. Patience it took, but my patience did not come from any pursuit of higher morality. It came from fear of parental reprisal. The basest form of morality: the avoidance of punishment.
So, what is patience to me as a 42 year old adult? It is suppressing my inner 5 year old.
I always hated Christmas. Still do. So much let down, every single goddamn time.
ReplyDeletePut on Vince Guaraldi, sip some eggnog, and ignore your annoying uncle...