Patience is a virtue, or so I’m told. I wouldn’t really know, since not only is patience not one of my virtues, I’d actually have to rank my lack of patience as my biggest flaw.
I think quickly, I act quickly, I talk quickly, I write quickly. I rush into things, and only fools, I’m told, rush into things. The only thing I don’t rush into is love, which according to the famous song, is the very event that most fools rush into – so I guess I have one thing, patience wise, to be proud of, right?
So where exactly does this amazing lack of patience leave me? It leaves me constantly wondering where I’ll be next, as opposed to basking in where I am now (Oh yeah, but I’m still single, and not rushing into anything that could create any waves in the placid lake that is my life.).
After one week of vacation, followed by my first work week as a self employed adult with a part time job with no strict schedule to adhere to, I have to admit that I’m suddenly learning all about patience. I’m learning to wait for my friends to get off from work so that we can hang out and I’m learning that there is no rush at night to fall asleep, because I don’t have any event to wake up for early the next morning.
I’m also learning that there is no rush to spend money that I don’t have, since I don’t have any sort of steady, disposable income. I’m learning to watch my stock portfolio increase at what seems like a snail’s pace, but I’m also realizing that, lo and behold, it does move, it moves up, and over the course of two and a half years as a micro, part time investor, I’ve returned a tidy gain of a little over 13% - now there’s some virtue that a man like me can understand!
As a former server, or waiter, in layman terms, I find it ironic that most of the ‘waiters’ that I’ve met are literally waiting tables while they wait for something else in their life to develop, be it a relationship, an artistic passion, or something as simple as enough money to come in so they can get out of debt and follow their dreams.
Now that I’m not waiting on tables, I’m waiting on free lance writing queries to be returned, for contest results to be announced, and most of all, I’m waiting for a big break, so that I can have more than enough income to pay my rent and live on tuna fish in the can. What this means, as far as I’m concerned, is that by definition, I’m still a waiter.
But all this waiting is doing something magical and remarkable for me – it is, believe it or not, actually teaching me not only the virtue that is patience, but to respect the simple joys of life a little more. I’m actually noticing sunsets and cloud formations and a lot of the other beautiful things that poets write about, the parts I learned to habitually skim over in my college English Literature courses.
I’m also waiting for next year’s baseball season, so that my beloved Oakland A’s can resume their quest for their 8th World Series Pennant. And the realist in me realizes that I may have to wait a lot longer than just next year for this to become a reality.
I wish a lot of other people would learn the virtue of patience. For example, I think more than ninety percent of Americans would agree that we could have and probably should have waited longer than we did before we invaded Iraq in 2003. After all, it’s been nearly five years since our invasion, and there is still no evidence of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that were cited as the precise reason that we could not wait one minute longer than we did to invade their nation.
All I’m saying is that we could have waited longer, and used less military might and force than we did and still perhaps have semi-peacefully dethroned Saddam Hussein and ‘liberated’ his people. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind or convince my readers of anything; this is just a thought that I’ve been thinking a lot lately (if lately translates into, since Bush’s historic Axis of Evil State of the Union Address in January of 2002).I think most humans should exercise patience more often during their personal discriminatory and decision-making processes. I believe this to be true based on a few controversial events that have taken place in the last ten years.
The first event that comes to mind is when a man named Richard Jewell was prematurely blamed for the Olympic Bombings in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996. Before Jewell was given a chance to assert his innocence, he was blamed for the bombings across the world, in almost every major newspaper. The television media, on the evening of the bombing, released Jewell’s identity on the air, despite the fact that the local police hadn’t even officially charged him with any crime. That same evening, Jewell was ridiculed by Leno and Letterman for what would continue for a week straight. The next morning he was heralded in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as “a failed law enforcement officer who may have planted the bomb so he could find it and be a hero.” (And this story was picked up by the Associated Press and re-printed all over our nation.). Even after he was officially taken off of the suspect list by the FBI, within three days of the bombing, Jewell nonetheless had to fight numerous law suits by bomb victims, costing him valuable time and lawyer fees. Eric Robert Rudolph was later found to have been the bomber.Clearly, we live in a world in which information can be communicated far quicker than the individual person can evaluate the quality of the information, and this is becoming extremely dangerous. I recall last year’s “Danish Cartoon Incident” in which 12 short cartoons regarding the Muslim prophet Mohammed were printed in an effort to contribute to a debate on the lack of criticism given to Muslims about their own religion. As a non-denominational yet oddly spiritual person, I can identify with both sides of this debate, but I do not feel that the Danish newspaper was allowed to defend itself before the misinformation regarding the cartoons became so widespread that two Danish embassies were burned and more than 100 people were killed in riots across the Middle East. Instead of teaching the world to sing, in perfect harmony, I think we should teach religious zealots how to act patiently; imagine the lives that could be saved! One of the most common feedbacks I receive in regard to these columns is that while they are good, and usually worth reading, they are too long, and so people often don’t have enough time to read all the way through. In my head, I usually think, well, I’m sorry that you don’t have ten to fifteen minutes to read my thoughts, but that’s your decision, and I’m not going to edit out what I feel is a pertinent part of my essay so that you have more time to watch some television show I don’t like. But then I think about all the times I’ve skipped out on an errand in order to be on time to watch ABC’s Lost**.
This leaves me feeling that instead of accusing today’s generation of having a "Sesame Street" attention span (which certainly falls under the realm of having too little patience), I should try and compromise with them, instead. So in order to award my less patient readers, this week’s issue of “It Sucks To Be You.” is exactly two thirds as long as the normal issue, and therefore, in theory, easier to read. You don’t have to wade or wait through three pages of single spaced ranting to get to the point. You’ve gotten it in only two. I hope you enjoyed this exercise in patience, but man oh man, you guys would have loved page three…