Patience

Note: This post was written on May 21, 2020. I opened it up today in my drafts and thought it was still relevant in it’s original form, so I have only edited it to add links. So when I reference “today” below, it means May 21, 2020.

I’ve been pondering patience lately for reasons that are likely obvious to everyone. We are in the most intense waiting game of our lives. No one knows what’s coming next. We have reached peak uncertainty. As we consider where we go next as a society (on so many levels and themes), we are all being met with a lot of “wait and see,” both from our local governments, the world, and likely in our everyday lives in big and small ways.

As I examined this prolonged uncertainty, I realized how powerful the practice of patience is for this exact moment. It is in a lot of respects, all we have when it comes to this uncertainty. And it is a hard practice, which is why a lot of us don’t like to practice it and in fact give ourselves labels around it. “I’m an impatient person,” is a refrain I often hear in my world. My response is often a question, “why is that?” And often, Byron Katie’s, “Is that really true?” How can a person simply BE an impatient person? It’s so black and white and gives no space for you to be something other than that, as if humans are only one thing or another. It’s just not true. You are not either an impatient or patient person. It is not an innate character trait. Patience is a practice. Practicing is a choice.

It is a practice because it takes effort and intention to see what is really underneath this catch all word, “impatience.” Often when we are experiencing impatience it is a mask for something else. Some discomfort that you can’t exactly put your finger on or are unwilling to recognize, so instead, it gets an umbrella term. As a result, it’s challenging to get to the roots in the moment. That is where the practice comes in.

What does this mean exactly? Think about it for yourself. When are the times you are most impatient with yourself and others? It will be different for everyone, but what it often masks is insecurity about not having a need met or pushing away a discomfort, which in itself is an umbrella term. Let’s break it down.

Impatience is a pushing away or a push through a particular moment. It is an inability to be with the moment exactly as it is. Is this true for you? Is impatience an avoidance tactic? Is it a self-preservation habit that has started to blur into a character trait?

I’ll use myself as an example here to put a finer point on it. One of the consistent instances when I am most impatient (inwardly and outwardly) is when I have repeated something many times or taught the same person something many times and then am asked the same question again. My impatience stems from the perception that they are not listening and hearing me, or that they seem to be ignoring me or that they don’t care enough to remember what I have said or taught. The impatience reaction here is me pushing away that feeling, which is deeply rooted throughout my life as not being seen, heard, and understood. So irritation and impatience are the defenses that arise to push that wound and pain away. All that person(s) is really trying to do is learn, it’s not about me and my stuff no matter how much my conditioning and reactivity tries to convince me otherwise.

This particular example may seem simple, but it is not simple in the moment because we go directly into our defensive patterning. Only upon reflection can the true nature of the reaction be discerned.

Which brings me to reflection and meditation and its importance in this process.

In meditation today I made a connection while thinking (yes, I was thinking in meditation, the brain never stops thinking) about this exact thing. As I reflected on impatience and how important my meditation practice is in not only regulating it, but also just noticing it and its roots, I had an idea as to why so many have such a deep aversion to meditation. (And this may not be a new idea, but it is new to me today.) Depending on how you were disciplined in your socialization, the look and feel of meditation, “go sit and reflect upon your thoughts,” may sound an awful lot like, “go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.” I was not punished in this way, but I know a lot of people who were, and I realized how much the body, your system and the subconscious may recognize a particular kind of meditation as punishment. Or even “go to your room and think about what you’ve done,” has a similar flavor to it. This might also be why we associate thinking about our lives and actions as a spiral into negativity or a negative act instead of associating anything positive with it.

This feels like an opportunity to reframe the entire practice of meditation. It is not a look at your “negative” spiraling thoughts, or even your “positive” ones. It is a dispassionate observation. Try to think of any object that you don’t have an opinion on, and then use that as a guide to bring that same mindset to your thoughts. The strong negative or positive charge we associate with our thoughts contributes to our mood swings and how we feel about ourselves. What if we were able to observe them without thinking those thoughts are actually us? “I am having this thought,” not “I am this thought,” or “this thought makes me this kind of person.” Being with ourselves in this way, and not seeing it as a punishment or that we are doing it wrong, allows us to observe our reactions in a similar way, and hence, practice patience with more ease.

If you have a particular aversion to “sitting in meditation” (due to what I have said above or anything else), consider a different entry point. There are so many types of meditation practices out there. You can do them sitting, standing, and walking. You can journal, you can sing, you can do voice memos. You can do them guided by a teacher, silent, using mantra, or some combination of all of these. There are so many options and free resources out there. (Including my podcast)

This is a highly simplified way of saying something that has so many layers. I could easily write a thousand more words on it. But my invitation is simply to investigate, get curious about this within yourself. It has never been a more prescient time to start the practice of patience or meditation and we have never had such strong external teacher as we do now. We need patience with the world as it changes, the people around us and most of all with ourselves.

Instead of saying, “I don’t want to have this experience,” consider what there is to learn from it and within it. It’s challenging, but the freedom within yourself of not pushing against everything is a gift.