All We Need is Just a Lot of Patience

What is patience?


The ability to wait for a bus without giving up and going home.


The skill of walking slowing with a toddler and being amazed, with her, at every stick, stone and flower.


Telephoning a friend and listening to his troubles, when he never returned your last call and forgot your birthday.


Patience can be small and easy, or deep and difficult.


A dictionary definition says it is "The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset."


Look it up on Wikipedia and the explanation includes:


"Patience (or forbearing) is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties."


Sometimes don't you just hate Patience?!  I think of myself as quite a patient person, and then I read this and feel ashamed for even thinking that!  Damn you Patience, for making me feel bad about myself...


Patience is sometimes easier over a distance.  If the friend or family member you had an argument with is overseas, it might be easier to wait for their postcard, or their call, with distance you are able to cool off, see things as they really are, forgive.


But equally distance can try your patience.  Your partner's away and all you want is a word of tenderness, a hug... You don't want to wait.  A text comes, or a phone message, and you're forced to interpret its true meaning.  You feel annoyed, angry, frustrated.  Argh - patience, where are you?!


Wikipedia also says that "Patience is the level of endurance one's character can take before negativity...."    Antonyms include hastiness and impetuousness.



How often have we hastily judged another, rather than waiting patiently to see how a situation plays out, or to allow them to explain themselves better, or to give ourselves time to step into their shoes and see the situation from their perspective?  


How often have we impetuously tooted our horn at another driver, snapped at our partner or done something selfish as a result of impatience?


Guilty.


If we sow seeds in our garden we wait, we water, we watch.  We don't dig it up the next day and stamp on it, or pour kerosene on it and set it alight because it didn't grow.


Things that require our patience often require our nurturing too. Be it a big idea, saving for a holiday, or a relationship.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.”  Rilke

"A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains."  Dutch Proverb

"Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice." George Jackson (1941 - 1971)

"Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind."  Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Jumping on Castles

When we had a new washing machine delivered I kept the box.  Perfect for a new playhouse for the misses 20 months and 3-and-a-very-important-¾.

I didn’t want a playhouse advertising a manufacturer of white goods though, so that night when the misses were snug in their beds I set to work dismantling the thing and turning it inside out.  Not as simple a job as I’d imagined, when I discovered that the cardboard wasn’t that of a regular supermarket box (funnily enough) but high-grade reinforced triple layer cardboard. 

Following the job of dismantling, it became swiftly apparent that my trusty glue gun wasn’t going to do the job of sticking all this high-grade box stock back together. Some kind of industrial strength hot rubber glue type of thing was required. Which I didn’t have at 9.30 on a Saturday night.  Thank god for extra-wide clear packing tape. It might not be beautiful but it’s certainly effective.

A couple of hours later we had a tall house with a pitched roof, with skylight (the manufacturer’s input, not mine – a happy chance), tall arched doors and a round window. 

When miss 3 ¾ saw it the next morning she gasped “It’s a PALACE”.  Instant payback for my two hours’ labour!

It was the day of our mid-winter party and while the husband got the bbq going (New Zealand mid-winter can be quite nice, on a good day) I sorted out the house, removing precious and delicate toys from the playroom and giving the Palace pride of place in the girls’ bedroom.

It was an hour or so into the party when a little boy came up to me to report that ‘someone is jumping on the wendy house’.  I rushed to the scene to find at least two little boys hurling themselves at my Palace. It was looking decidedly less 'palace' like and more 'ruined castle'.  One door was off and the whole structure was on its side in a sorry, squashed-looking state.

“Out!” I ordered, “Everyone out, now, no one plays in here any more.” I didn’t even take the time to identify who was doing the jumping or who the ringleader might be.  Two hours I spent, with loving care...

I hope I’m bringing my girls up to respect others’ property – whatever it may be.  I believe I am.  ‘Boys will be boys’ gives a child, an adolescent or an adult male an excuse for ignorance.  Of course children make mistakes – it’s all part of the learning process. But there is a high proportion of parents who allow their male children to behave in a destructive, disruptive way, unfettered, unchecked and undisciplined, because, they say, “Boys will be boys.”  Boys will also be wife beaters, child abusers, brawlers, depressives and suicides.  Much more so, in this country especially, than girls.

Doing something about this negative trend begins when they are born.  Letting them know that they are expected to be sensitive – with regard to the belongings of others, the feelings of others, and consequently with regard to themselves.  Teaching our children these things contributes to their sense of belonging, of community and of connection.  It’s the foundation of strength and a sense of self.  If we don’t allow them this, we’re jumping on their own castles before they’ve even been built.

Community Parenting - I stuck my oar in.

It was pretty busy the play park yesterday, my children always opt to swing first, but since all swings were busy, we headed for the slides and tunnels, then the see-saw, then we moseyed over to wait our turn on a swing.  Pretty soon a baby swing was made available for my littlest.  Miss Nearly 4 wanted a 'big kids swing' so she waited. I'd already noticed that one child had been on the swing for ages.  His parents seemed to have no sense that others were waiting.

Another baby swing came free and as a mother approached it with her small son, another adult rushed past, grabbed the swing, yelled across the park to her friend, who brought a little girl over and plonked her in it.  UNBELEIVABLE!  The usurped mother and I exchanged incredulous looks, but nothing was said.  Aha!  These were, it seemed the parents of the endlessly swinging boy...

As the father appeared I pointed out, politely, that two little girls (there was now a queue) had been waiting a long time for a swing and that it was perhaps time to move his son along.  A minute or two later I reiterated, a little more directly, that it was time for his son to give up a swing.  The child on the next swing nobly volunteered his - even though he'd been on for about half the time - sweet chap.  One girl now swinging, one waiting.  The father was talking to his son, who did not wish to leave his swing, gently trying to get him off the swing.  It went on and on.  My patience waned.  'Just get the child off the swing man', I thought.  "Come on, time's up," I said.  Clearly we were going to be kept waiting until the stubborn child chose to get off.  So.... did I cross the line....?

I went up to the father and son, said "Come on dude, time's up" and lifted the child off the swing.  "Yes, but not forcing it," said the father.  'Actually,' I wanted to say, 'yes, sometimes forcing it. Who's in charge here.  You or your small son?'   Instead I said something about teaching children to share.  And he walked away.

Was I right, or wrong?  Did I cross the line?