I’ve been off on my publishing schedule for Angel at the End of the World. I have good reasons why, though that doesn’t make for less unhappiness when the next chapter isn’t ready and available on schedule. I hope to do better now that we’re down to the end game of the story. May that hope hold true. Meanwhile, although I don’t usually talk much about anything that’s not fiction here, I thought I’d say a bit about what’s been on my mind (and in my life) lately.
Patience is a virtue, or so the old saying goes. A friend of mine who is an astrologer says that, for some of us who lack the virtue, patience might as well be people in hospitals. I’ve been receiving a detailed, in-depth education in patience for the last several months and more acutely in the last three weeks, so I thought I’d weigh in on why neither of those statements feels true.
When I think of virtues, I think of noble qualities. Certainly patience can be a noble quality and even in my most impatient days I’ve gathered the small amount of it I possessed in order to be able to be kind in frustrating situations—for example, a confused elderly woman calls on the phone at my office and it takes a good five minutes of presence, while listening and speaking from the heart kindly to let her know that we are not the droids she’s looking for while helping her to find the ones she needs. Patience can present itself as graciousness, as in the ability to wait in line (without fuming on the inside) or drive in traffic (without cussing out the other drivers under one’s breath). Or as the ability to simply accept people for who they are instead of who you’d prefer them to be (sometimes not so simple), including the ability to spend compassionate time and energy with people you love (or whom you may not even like) when they are ill, or when their mental, physical, and/or spiritual faculties aren’t what they used to be or aren’t what they wished they were. Or to compassionately be with oneself during a time like that (sometimes a taller order than being with others in the same state).
I don’t know that any of that is noble; noble, to me, is a word that puts a thing or idea or feeling on a pedestal. And human beings don’t live their lives on pedestals. We just are.
Patience is a catch-all word and a catch-all state—for kindness, presence, listening, speaking from the heart, graciousness, compassion with self, and compassion with others—and for the ability to do and/or be with these actions and/or emotions with others and with ourselves. It’s been said in many other analogous situations that one must be able to do this with and for ourselves before truly being able to do so for others (if you can’t love yourself, how can you love anyone else?). But I think it’s more of a continuum than that; it was perfectly possible for me to have at least a modicum of patience for other people when I had none for myself.
And then my world flipped upside down. Make no mistake, I’d been on the downslide for a while, with my lack of patience for myself contributing to enormous stress on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. But the events of 2011 drove me over the edge.
A close relative had a series of strokes that induced dementia and spent a week a psych lockdown and then months in a care facility before his brain was able to heal enough to restore most normal function. The rest of the family was caught up in intense grief and, with nowhere else to turn or no desire to turn elsewhere, turned to me. I tried to handle it all. I thought I could. I even thought I’d taken good care of myself during that time. Hindsight being what it is, I can see that I did the best I could but that my best wasn’t good enough—for me.
During the second half of the year, my health collapsed. Not as badly as it could have, but badly enough that I could barely make it through the day. I spent all of that time searching out the right healer and then following his marching orders. Then my dog of twelve years, who had been my constant companion through thick and thin, crossed over at New Year’s. I mourned him, and, still mourning, fell apart further last week—grieving not just the Doggie Ranger but the entire year and the battering it gave me. I am only now understanding better what else it has given me.
Perfection isn’t what I’m after here. It’s not even on the table. Opportunity is what I’m talking about. It shows up in all the most unexpected places, on every breath. Like a gift.
Which is how I’ve come to the conclusion that, funny as the joke can be, “patience are people in hospitals” as a attitude representing of the entire lack of patience can turn a person into a patient, whether they happen to land in a hospital or not.
My watch battery died last weekend and I haven’t replaced it, instead choosing to make an experiment of my relationship with time. After three or four days of checking my empty wrist for the hour and minute, even with all the other available sources of time-watching I’ve given up focusing so much on what time it is and spent more time focusing on what I’m doing. On being present. On whatever emotion I happen to be feeling. On how I choose to spend my moments and with whom.
Since I’m living my days right now in a moment-to-moment fashion, unable to plan too far ahead for most things and frankly unwilling to push, I’m learning to just be in a way that is kind, present, listening- and speaking-from-the-heart, gracious, and compassionate toward myself as well as others.
Patient.
That said (patiently!), we come upon this week’s free fiction offering, Chapter 22 of Angel at the End of the World. To read, click here.
The previous chapters are free to read on this site. Just hover over the “Serial Novel – Angel at the End of the World” heading at the top of the page and choose your chapter.
If you read, I hope you enjoy.
Best wishes,
Leslie
