Patience and Control

Someone asked me once what I thought my biggest character flaw was. I replied that it was the fact that I was completely perfect, as this tended to make other people feel bad about themselves…

In reality, one of the things I find most challenging is patience, and I think this is a common issue for many of us. Whether it’s being stuck behind a slow driver (yes, this is an L.A. issue I now deal with!), or waiting to hear if we got the job, or wondering if we passed a test, or even when we get into the mindset of ‘next year, when a, b and c have happened, life will be better’, patience can be a challenge. Impatience is a mild, somewhat acceptable form of anger, and used correctly it can motivate us to take charge and make positive changes in our lives and for the world around us. But when every little thing starts to get on your nerves, when you find yourself sighing with exasperation at the large crowd of tourists walking slowly in front of you, or the older lady having a conversation with the check-out person instead of moving out of your way, or if the waiter doesn’t bring your water quickly enough, it might be a sign that something is out of whack.

It seems to me that patience and control go together, or rather, impatience is born out of a perceived lack of control of a situation. The world around us is behaving in a manner that we don’t appreciate, that we could do better at, and we simultaneously strengthen our own attachment to our righteous indignation and separate ourselves even further from those around us (“Doesn’t this person see that I’m WAITING?”).  We confirm our already well-established beliefs that we are right, and everyone else is wrong, and each time something happens to test our patience, we confirm it again.

It makes our minds harden. It makes our bodies harden. And it hardens our hearts. If, as my dear friend and gurubai Vidya likes to remind me, 90% of what other people say and do has nothing to do with us, then we need to stop taking it all so personally. That person may be walking slowly in front of you because they can’t go any faster. The waiter who forgets your bread may be dealing with a terrible boss, and is just trying to get through the shift without quitting. The old woman striking up a conversation with the bank teller may be enjoying the only personal contact she’s going to have all day. We’ve become such an accelerated society, used to getting everything that we want right now, that we actually believe that 5 minutes later is not good enough.

Everyone around us, in every moment of every day, is doing the best that they can in that moment. Perhaps, because you are so perfect (;-)), you could do a better job. But I can pretty much guarantee that at some point or another, we have all been the perceived cause of someone else’s impatience, perhaps when we drove down a street too slowly because we didn’t know where we were (again, me in L.A.).

So that can become our practice: when we find impatience rising in ourselves, we can remind ourselves that this person, this group, this situation is evolving and happening to the best of its abilities. It reminds us that everyone else is not just a bit player in the movie called My Life, but that we are all sharing this planet, this sidewalk, this restaurant, these great gifts, together.

sribhagavan uvaca:

asamsayam mahabaho

mano durnigraham calam

abhyasena tu kaunteya

vairagyena ca grhyate

The Blessed Lord spoke:

Without doubt, O Arjuna,

The mind is unsteady and difficult to restrain;

But by practice, Arjuna,

And by indifference to worldly objects,

It is restrained.

Bhagavad-Gita VI.35

(translation by Winthrop Sargeant)