patient in an impatient world

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“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”

Henri JM Nouwen

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Life unfolds. Please note I didn’t say fast, nor slow, just that it unfolds. Regardless of the actual pace of life, unfolding takes patience. Yeah. Even if it unfolds faster, you have to be patient enough to let it unfold.

Look.

I am an impatient guy.

Well.

I am a patient guy.

Ok.

I am an impatient patient guy. But first and foremost, I am an unfolding guy.  What I mean by that is, well, you have to live a situation in its fullest n order to fully be enlightened as to what it (a) can teach you and (b) permit you to see ‘enough’ in order to assess the best choice based on that situation.

Which leads me to the enemy of every situation: impatience.

Impatience is a virtue and a vice. And it often wanders the fine line balance beam of mortality & immortality. Hey. Anyone ever noticed if you eliminate one letter those words quickly become morality and immorality? Anyhoo. Impatience can certainly kill unfolding quickly and it can also kill unfolding slowly <it starts you down the slippery slope to death>. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that impatience, on occasion, can quicken unfolding and spark a slow build to prosperity. Yeah. Impatience can lead to mortality or immortality. And it seems silly to me to pigeonhole impatience into solely the ‘bad’ category.

Impatience in and within itself isn’t bad nor good. It just, well, is.

Which leads me back to unfolding.

People are patient or impatient, life, situations and events just unfold. They are neither patient or impatient. This means good decisions, and bad decisions, or in the purview of the patient and the impatient, not that which is unfolding. And decision making has no formula with regard to this patience/impatience thing because errors can result from deciding too quickly or by delaying too long.

Too quickly and a decision can be killed in so many ways your head can spin.

Too slowly <too patient> and, well, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … at least by delaying you can watch everything unfold as you watch the decision’s life slowly unravel in the form of lost opportunities or lost <or reduced> benefit from a quicker decision. Hey. I just made an argument for patience, no?

I imagine my point s we could all be just a bit more patient in a hasty world. We can all benefit from letting situations unfold just a little more than we typically do. All I really know is the only way to find some of the most valuable, but hidden, things in life is to let things unfold at their own pace. Ponder.