Practicing Patience

I am not a patient person by nature. I am not patient with others, and I’m not patient with myself. I want results now. So I had to be sick with chronic fatigue for fifteen years. I had to wait seven years to have my first child after getting married, enduring fertility treatments and a miscarriage along the way. “Be patient” people said. “Your baby is coming.” I had to wait five years to get pregnant with my second. I had a successful holistic healing business, and I had to shut it down when my son was three to tend to his needs. “Be patient,” people told me. This is your purpose now. And it was. I developed another practice, and it too started to take off. And then I lost my sister, and the cancer came. “Be patient,” people said. “This is your focus now.” That and getting through school. I started a new career, and I finally gained the courage to ask for a separation. For financial reasons, it may be two years before he can move out. “We have to be patient” the boys’ dad has said. It is humbling, the recognition that we are not in charge of the timing of events. That on the human level, we don’t actually have control. Control is an illusion. That the only thing we have control over is letting go of control. 

These recent events have helped me to see how control is wielded in society. There is a deep need for the average human to be right. To win the fight. The argument. To drive home the point. We cling to our views and our sides as if our life depended on it And maybe, on a subconscious level, we believe it does. Maybe clinging to a point of view, an argument, a line of reasoning, gives us the illusion of control? Maybe we feel safer because we’re not alone? Maybe when we cling to a set of ideologies, beliefs, and groups of people, we feel there is safety in numbers? We are a tribal breed of beings after all. 

I am impatient. I want us to evolve past this. I want us to see these forces of control for what they are, for us to think for ourselves, for us to cut the puppet strings that cause us to fight against each other instead of the systems that subjugate us. I want to disrupt these systems. I want to work towards unity and peace. I want us all to take the red pill and wake up. I want us to sing the song of the mockingjay. Instead of a Brave New World, I want us to be brave. But I will be patient. I will raise my family, build my business, my clinical craft, and bide my time. Until I can feel the shift in the consciousness. When we are ready as a collective to move past control. Past rhetoric to responsiveness. Past subjugation to liberation. Humanity wakes up in waves. There are many that see the system for what it is. They see the great Oz pulling the stings behind the curtain. There are not enough of us yet to create a tipping point, but that day is coming. Until then, I will wait and watch. And I will practice patience.