Impatiently Patient

“Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.”   Eknath Easwaran

Life can be a bit tough when you are a "Type A" personality.  I like my life on a schedule, planned out to the Ntn degree, every minute accounted for, with the "what ifs" thought out and "planned out".  I make lists.  I write them.  I tic off things to be done in my head.  I love my lists.  It night be some what neurotic, but sometimes I think my life would fall apart without some sort of organization/control over the craziness called life.  My lists and planning lead to me being impatiently patient.

I am pretty sure that I drive my family crazy with my lists.  Maybe I am a bit OCD.  Maybe some of it is genetic.  All I know is that when I want a task or tasks done I want them done NOW!  I don't want to wait 5 minutes for it to get started.  I don't want to wait until the TV show is over for the task to begin.  I just want it done now.  So much for being patient.........now is always better (for me!).

This is an irony that I have begun to notice........not only with myself, but other parents:  We spend so much time and energy trying to teach our children patience.  We look for opportunities to help our children better master this important concept.  We are constantly reminding our children to wait, take turns, share, and understand they can't have what they want when they want it.  Yet, as we are teaching them this, we are also telling our children to do a task RIGHT NOW.  It almost seems hypocritical to demand that our children do a task and showing complete impatience.  After thinking about it, being impatient with the children about the "little things" only creates drama and stress that really doesn't need to be there.  (Just another reminder: "Pick your battles.")

And as if our lives couldn't get any more impatient, our links to text messaging and social media sites seem to feed the impatience.  We now have the ability to know where people are, what they are doing, who they are with, what music they are listening to, and much more.......and all with a few clicks or finger swipes.  We begin to show signs of impatience when people don't text us back "fast enough" or don't respond to a status update or tweet within seconds.  We can even change what music we listen to on a whim as we are no longer stuck only listening to the radio or CDs.  We can now download music we want or listen to radio stations from across the nation and create personalized radio stations on a whim.....all from a smartphone, iPad, or computer. 


So, just how am I (or anyone for that matter) going to teach my children and myself to be patient in an impatient world???  In order to teach patience, one needs to embrace patience and begin to make necessary behavior modifications.  I need to lower the expectations of myself so that I have goals that are easier to achieve.  If the expectations of myself are more reasonable, it will be easier to create more reasonable expectations of those around me.  If I expect a little less out of myself, I will be less stressed and *hopefully* easier to live with.  Hopefully I will be able to show my children and family grace or generosity of spirit by being more patient and less impatient.