WAITING vs. PATIENCE:

This is a fact of life is it not? When we were younger we waited to become a teenager, then to get the driver’s license, then to turn a legal 21, then to find the right career, partner, first house, to have a family, to get the big promotion, also  waiting in line at the grocery store or the DVM. Even the grapes in the crate above are waiting to be processed into delicious wine! Waiting escapes no one!

Sometimes, the waiting we experience throughout our lives can turn to frustration or even disappointment, especially if we have been waiting a long time for a certain event and the outcome isn’t what we expected or wanted. So, let’s consider an alternative to the feeling of continually waiting…..patience. As my dear mother use to say to me (and often): patience is a virtue!

Patience doesn’t mean that we become powerless and give up, rather, it can be empowering in that we wait, observe and determine when and how to act. One author, Judith Orloff, M.D.  in her article The Power of Patience (September, 2012)  presents the idea of patience as a “form of compassion, a re-attuning to intuition, a way to emotionally redeem your center in a world filled with frustration”.  She further says that she is defining patience as an “active state, a choice to hold tight until intuition says….make your move. It means waiting your turn, knowing your turn will come.”

Easier said than done sometimes, right? However, in life timing is everything and that means you have to ‘wait’ till the correct opportunity presents itself, trusting that the ‘wait’ will be worth it. The key word….trusting the wait.

I also think that maybe sometimes we ‘wait’ on the wrong things…….maybe there are just some things that we should not be waiting for. Worth a few moments in thought I think. Maybe in the big scope of life, a few things we thought were worth the wait, just really don’t matter.

“Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience”  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

PJP