How Long Is Learning Patience Going to Take???

The fact that I have constantly wondered about the answer to this question is, in itself, telling.

Patience is by far my Everest. In fact, I bet I’d be able to train and climb Mount Everest faster and with less pain, than it’s going to take for me to be a consistently patient person.

If I’m given a timeframe to work with – fine, that sets my expectation. But when an activity is open-ended, if I’m generous, I usually assign it about two minutes or less.

So, as I do on my mat, I’ve been taking notice of where and when I’m the most impatient. For the past month these situations seem to be my main trigger points.

Scenario 1: In yoga class when we’re held in a pose for a long time and I begin shaking and cramping up, my thoughts are: Get me out of this! Hurry up! Count faster! OMG! I’m hanging on by a thread!!! I’ve got three breaths left before I fall out of this thing.

Scenario 2: I ask a question to someone, “What’s 2 + 2?” They answer, “You know when I was about two years old I discovered my favorite color is green and thus began my love of St Patrick’s Day. But my family is from Croatia and so I was never good at math but I think the answer is four.” Okay, I stopped listening at “green.” Who is this idiot? This person isn’t credible and I shouldn’t believe their answer.

Scenario 3: Sitting down to write, say this post, and after about half an hour and my fingers aren’t typing. Ugh! Great….I don’t have anything. This is taking forever! How am I going to get this done in time? I should have started this sooner. Maybe this is the wrong topic?

No patience, no patience, and no patience.

Upon reflecting on these situations when I made it through the pose, got the right answer from the first person (even though I asked a second too), and clearly, I found something to fill a blank page; why did I react the way that I did?

Scenario 1: Hurry up because I’ve lost faith that I have the physical strength to make it through.

Scenario 2: I have no faith in this person because their train of thought is completely disorganized and not concise.

Scenario 3: Fragile faith in my creative ability.

Eureka! Patience and faith are interlaced! I have no patience because I don’t have faith that no matter how long something takes, it’s going to happen.

How capitalistic of me – viewing time, money, and productivity as a packaged calculation when evaluating people, products, services, transportation, etc. When they aren’t moving fast enough, if it’s not creating the results that I need, then I see it as a sign to move on and find an alternative.

But hang on…in order to have faith, I must have trust. Trust in myself to have the confidence to stay the course. Trust in my fellow human beings that they are reliable in some way, and trust in the universe that the circumstances that are present are what is supposed to be for a reason.

Oh SH*T!!! This is a trifecta??? I just wanted to be more patient…but now I have to work on my trust issues too? Oh good grief!

The biggest Aha! in this is I always thought I was impatient because of the hectic schedule I was keeping yet in breaking this down, it’s not. I’ve been out of a corporate environment for almost two years now and even though I’m not constantly besieged in deadlines, my tolerance quota hasn’t changed that much.

Huh…could it be that free enterprise and the materialism that’s so highly valued by America’s society is what’s driving this overall loss of faith, and not the digital age?