Patience is probably my least favorite virtue. And by that I mean, I struggle with it on nearly a daily basis. In the morning, I wait for my son to get from his 40 minute shower and get to work. I wait for trains. I wait for others to arrive at classes, parties, and most events.
My problem with patience is the clock-watching that occurs simultaneously. I hate being beholden to a clock. It reminds me of the punctual and orderly world we are part of. It reminds me that we base our lives around a clock and not the natural sunlight that our ancestors lived their lives around. It reminds me that we are out of sinc with the day.
If we didn’t have clocks, our arriving five minutes late or even a half hour late would have less significance because we would say things like, “I’ll see you when the moon enter the western sky,” or “I will get up to work when the sky gets light.”
I often wonder if I would have patience issues if we did not operate our lives around a clock. Probably waiting for the next season, I’d become impatient. Waiting for the next day to visit friends might make me impatient. But I think those levels of impatience are probably not as personally challenging as watching a clock most of our day…
Peace