by M J Ryan
I'm not alone in this belief, says Harned. Most of us alive today think waiting represents a flaw in some system, rather than a natural condition of life. But human beings have always had to wait—for good weather to plant crops, for plagues to end, for their loved ones to return from years at sea, never knowing if they were alive or not. The only difference now is what we wait on, not that we must.
In fact, warns this professor of religious studies, waiting on factors outside of our control is only going to increase as technology and complexity increase. Studies show the average person spends eleven days a year in line—and that doesn't count the number of hours in cars and on planes or wading through electronic voice mail to speak to a real live person. Technology doesn't reduce our waiting time—it just changes what we're waiting for.
Professor Harned helped me realize that, while certainly systems can be improved, waiting can never be completely eliminated from our lives. And the more that we accept this truth, like Wayne Dyer's Greek flier did, the happier we will be. Think on that the next time your blood begins to boil at an automated voice mail system, a trip to the post office, or when your computer freezes.
To live is, at least in part, to wait.
IT'S BETTER TO WORK AT IT THAN TO BUY YOUR WAY OUT OF IT
I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
A while back, a friend gave Don and me a desktop computer he no longer needed. This computer could take a DSL line, making our connection much faster and freeing up a phone line. Great, we said. It's simple to install, we were told.
Unfortunately, like so much of life, it may have been simple, but it sure wasn't easy. Don fiddled and fiddled, spent time on the phone with our email provider, and then threw up his hands. “I can't figure it out,” he moaned. “Let's just go out and buy a new computer.”
Now I am a frugal New Englander and this went against all of my values, including patience. Why throw away a (perhaps) perfectly good computer because you are not willing to take the time to figure out how to make it work? “Call Damian,” I suggested, referring to our computer genius stepson. “Please try again. I am not willing to give up yet.” (Of course this was easy for me to say, I wasn't the one who had already spent three hours on it.)
While he went back to work, I ruminated. Don's response seemed typical. Everything in our culture supports such thinking. If something's not working, well, throw it away and get a new one. Don't worry about having patience, buy your way out of it. Buy a new water heater rather than fix the old one. Pay alimony rather than dig into the difficulties with your spouse.
Every day, advertisers bombard us with messages that life doesn't have to be unpleasant, difficult, or annoying if only you buy what they're selling. Use products instead of patience; new hard drives instead of hard work.
There are many problems with such an attitude, not the least of which is the crushing consumer debt we Americans are carrying. But that's only the most obvious problem.
At a subtler level, our buying into this belief causes us to give up too soon, to miss out on the spiritual and emotional rewards that sticking with something offers. To work through a problem with our spouse rather than throw up our hands in despair; to try, like Einstein in the above quote, one more time to solve a thorny dilemma; and yes, to stick with trying to make the computer work—these and countless other situations that require patience teach us about ourselves.
We learn that we are resourceful, competent, that we can count on ourselves when life challenges us. And when we do succeed, we experience a sense of accomplishment that could not have been gotten if we paid our way out of it.
That's what happened for Don. Two hours after proclaiming he was giving up, he figured it out. It didn't cost a penny, and the show he put on dancing around the bedroom in pride was priceless.
WHERE ARE YOU HURRYING TO?
The thing about the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
LILY TOMLIN
Denise is one of the most well-organized and speedy people I know. She doesn't waste a minute of time. As a consequence, she has accomplished a lot in her thirty-five years, including launching two start-up companies. But she was stopped in her tracks one Saturday morning.
“My husband and I were going to do errands together. In my efficient manner, I had divided the chores up into two lists, one for him and one for me. My thought was that we would each buzz through our list as fast as possible. As I handed him his list, his face fell. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought the point was to do these things together.’ A lightbulb flashed on in my head for about a minute, but I didn't really get it. I was too busy pushing ahead. Eventually he left me. Then I had lots of time to think. And I've come to see that the journey is as important as the destination.”
Where are we hurrying to anyway? Did Denise want to spend time with her husband or get the chores done? So many of us are speeding around so quickly that we don't even bother to consider where we are trying to go or how what we are doing fits into what really matters to us.
“Are you the first to jump up and clean off the table?” asks Iyanla Vanzant. “We got stars for that in first grade. . . . The busyness started way back then. We were rewarded for doing more than our share. We were encouraged to stay busy.” By adulthood, it's become a habit. We've become, in Iyanla's words “do-more-better-faster people.” But are we enjoying our lives? No, she insists. “Trust me, do-more-better-faster people . . . do not enjoy working: we simply do not know how to stop.”
What if there were a better answer than hurrying? It turns out there is. Sports psychologist Gary Mack counsels top athletes to make a 90 percent effort. When they do, they actually go faster. How come? Because voluntary muscles are organized into opposing pairs, like a brake and an accelerator going at the same time. With a 90 percent effort, athletes “expend a lot of muscular energy but they relax the antagonist muscles that hinder maximum performance,” explains Mack. At 100 percent, the muscles are working against themselves.
What if you were to employ 90 percent effort in your life? “You don't always have to have something to do,” says Iyanla. “When you do have something to do, do it at a pace that is comfortable to you . . . knowing that everything gets done in divine time and according to divine order.”
If this perspective is challenging for you, remind yourself of The First Rule of Holes: “When you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging.” The next time you find yourself in a frazzle, stop. Stop digging, stop racing around, and ask yourself, Where am I hurrying to? Is it a destination that I truly care about? If so, how might I give 90 percent to get 100 percent results?
BOREDOM IS ALL IN OUR HEADS
When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
ERIC HOFFER
Ana has developed a new habit. Suddenly everything she doesn't want to do comes with the label “boring.” “That's boring,” she'll proclaim when I suggest we read a particular story or inform her that we are going out to do errands. “It's too boring to wait,” she whines when I tell her I will attend to her needs in two minutes. “Where did you learn that?” I ask, but she can't say. I think she picked it up in the ethers.
Boredom as a lament is everywhere. Apparently there is no greater crime in life these days than being bored. Waiting for food to cook is boring—zap it in the microwave. Waiting for a movie plot to unfold is boring—fast-forward the TiVo. Reading a book from beginning to end is boring—skim Facebook updates on the Internet instead. We crave fast-paced video games, the blur of quick-cut music videos, TV programs with speeded up conversation (they've figured out technically how to do this by the way; dialogue on TV is now faster than the speaker's actual pace). We want, we need, constant stimulation—or else we're bored.
Such speed is fun, exhilarating. But it comes with a price tag. What happens to our ability to concentrate, to ponder d
eeply, to understand things within a context, to work hard today for that which will not bear fruit for many tomorrows?
The labeling of a huge part of human experience as boring is a relatively new phenomenon. The concept of boredom—a sense of emptiness and a lack of stimulation—didn't even exist until the nineteenth century. Before that, it was used only in the context of a person who spoke too long or rambled off the topic: “Oh, she's such a bore!” Now it is a state of being that is a fate worse than death.
Psychologists say that the problem we think is “out there”—in the book, movie, job, relationship—is actually in us. Boredom, they say, is created by an inability to delay gratification and a low tolerance for frustration, both of which have serious implications for our success in life and in love.
Any time we proclaim something boring, what we really are saying is that we don't have patience for it. Rather than looking at ourselves for the source of the problem—and therefore the solution—we look at whatever is provoking the feeling and label that the problem.
A lot of human experience can be considered boring. There are huge stretches in parenting, in relationships, in work, where “nothing” is happening, or at least nothing obvious. We can consider those moments boring and seek to alleviate that boredom with any distraction available. Or we can see such occasions as opportunities to tap into our patience and look more deeply.
Try it yourself. Go on a fast for a week in which you refuse to consider any experience boring. When your mind begins to use that label—in traffic, say, or on hold—challenge yourself to find something of interest in what is going on, either in yourself or the world around you. How does that change your experience?
With attention, nothing is boring, even the most routine tasks. If you tune in to how the warm soapy water feels on your hands as you wash the pots and pans, how does that change the experience for you? Or weeding the garden, how does it feel to bend and stretch in the sunlight? What is the name of that gray bird with the crested head that suddenly appeared? This level of experiencing life isn't one that we usually tune in to, but it is one that can bear many riches of wonder at the very fact of being alive in this amazing world.
REMEMBER RULE NUMBER SIX
Don't take it personally.
DON MIGUEL RUIZ
Two leaders are meeting, when an employee of Leader Number One comes bursting in, ranting and pounding his fist. Leader Number One says, “Kindly recall rule number six,” whereupon the man instantly composes himself, apologizes, and leaves. This happens twice more. Finally Leader Number Two can't contain himself. “What is rule number six?” he asks. “Don't take yourself so damn seriously,” replies Number One. “That's a fine rule,” says Number Two. “What are the others?” “That's it,” says Number One.
I loved that story when I came across a version of it in The Art of Possibility. It has so much to teach us about patience.
Have you ever noticed that the less patience a person has the more self-importance they seem to exhibit? I shouldn't have to put up with this, they seem to say, because I deserve better. I've got better places to be and better things to do. I am too important to wait. The universe revolves around me—or at least it should. “Don't you know who I am?” the very impatient dad of a friend used to thunder at waiters, clerks, and others whom he saw as obstacles in his path.
There's another great story in The Art of Possibility about this link between self-importance and impatience. The famous conductor Herbert von Karajan once jumped into a taxi and shouted to the driver to hurry up. “Where to?” asked the cab driver. “It doesn't matter,” said von Karajan. “They need me everywhere.”
For each of us, the task of growing up requires a balancing act between healthy self-esteem on the one hand and being too self-centered on the other, between understanding how wonderful we are and recognizing that the world doesn't revolve around us.
One of the reasons we experience impatience is because deep in the inner recesses of our hearts, we believe that life should always go our way, and that there is something terribly amiss if it doesn't. That belief comes from the infantile part of us for, as babies, it worked that way (or at least it should have). Our caregivers existed to meet our needs immediately and life really did revolve around us.
But relatively soon, they changed the rules on us. We had to fit into the larger program, whatever that meant in our particular family—dealing with siblings, set mealtimes, day care, etc.—and life was never the same. As we grow, we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that as magnificent as we may be, we're not the center of the universe. And in some way we're still mourning that loss.
That's why when we experience impatience, it helps a lot to remind ourselves that it's not all about us and that what is happening is not personal. Life is just going impartially on its own way, and the more we align ourselves with the way it is going, the happier and more content we will be. When we remember rule number six, we can lighten up and roll a bit better with life's punches.
TUNING OUT IS AS IMPORTANT AS TUNING IN
Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.
ANONYMOUS
I used to have an employee who was incredibly hard driving. Barbara prided herself on working longer hours than anyone and never taking any time off. I would have to force her to take vacations. My signal that she needed rest? She became impatient with customers and coworkers, less resilient to the irritations of her job.
How come it's so easy to see that kids become cranky because they are overtired and so hard to understand that the same thing may be true for us adults? I am convinced that much of our impatience comes from our never tuning out. Between emails, voice mails, texts, and phone calls, we are never off duty. A survey by Pitney Bowes found that 38 percent of workers said they were interrupted six times or more per hour. Work can and does call on us any hour of the day or night. The concept of weekends seems to have lost all meaning. We never have uninterrupted downtime.
If that weren't enough, we are constantly being flooded with information—from the Internet, magazines, TV, radio, books. We wonder why so many of us have short-term memory problems, why, in the words of Rick Wagonheim of R/Greenberg Associates, “we're all suffering from at least a little attention deficit disorder.” Our poor brains are just crying out, “NO MORE!”
All this stimulation and outward attention has one effect: to make everything a blur and to create a sense of mental restlessness that is the antithesis of patience. David Shenk writes about this in The End of Patience: “As we go to higher info altitudes, where the information moves faster . . . our eyes, ears, and cerebral cortexes have more to keep up with. We do keep up, but in order to do so we habituate ourselves to shorter moments of concentration . . . and to a manic routine of ‘multitasking’ which so often leads to half-baked ideas and performance.
“And yes, we lose quiet moments, moments of reflection.”
We don't just need time to reflect. We also need adequate sleep. The latest statistics on sleep patterns in the United States reveal that one in seven Americans suffers from insomnia on any given night, and one in ten of us has chronic sleep problems. The National Sleep Foundation claims the average American is sleeping 20 percent less than a century ago, or one and a half fewer hours per night.
That hour and a half may seem like not such a big deal. But researchers are finding that it leads to all sorts of health problems including higher blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and has been identified as a factor in disasters such as Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, and the Challenger space shuttle. Many of us are going around in a sleep-deprived state that is as dangerous as being drunk.
We all need enough sleep and we all need waking hours in which we are not accountable to anyone else. Otherwise we just won't have the mental and physical reserves life requires. Each of us needs to find our own way with this, schedule-wise. I work incredibly hard between the hours of eight and six. After that, I refu
se to do business. And, with few exceptions, I do not work on weekends. As a consequence of these “rules,” I find that I have much more patience. Conversely, when I have violated my rules for too long, everyone and everything drives me crazy.
Baseball legend Satchel Paige put it this way: “If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cooling thoughts.” Amen! Tune out as well as in and watch your patience soar.
WHAT DOES THIS MATTER IN THE LARGER SCHEME OF THINGS?
Keep cool: it will all be one a hundred years hence.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Last weekend was the Fourth of July and Ana was glued to my side for four straight days. “Mommy, can we go swimming now? . . . Mommy, Mommy, can I have juice? . . . Mommy, umm, umm, Mommy can we go swimming now? Mommy, can I watch The Wiggles? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy . . .” I lost count of how many times she said “mommy” at 1,372. Finally on Sunday night, I asked her if she would please go for ten minutes without asking me a question because I needed a break. Her response? “Why?” (Which, by the way, dissolved me into laughter, a great patience booster.)
Mostly I survived the experience without losing my temper by putting her behavior into a bit of perspective. In the big picture of our lives, what does The Four Days of Endless Questions matter? I reminded myself that I'm lucky that she wants my attention so much. Having raised teenagers, I know that the time when I'm the center of her universe, the object of her adoration, will be over in the blink of an eye and that I might as well savor it while I can.
When I set out to learn about something, I read every book on the subject and carefully study those I know who possess the quality I want in myself. I watch them in action; I ask a lot of questions. Books give me theory, but tend to be short on practice. In the case of patience, there is a lot out there about how we ought to be patient, but precious little on how we actually do it. So I've relied very heavily on people I know to teach me the ins and outs of this elusive quality.