We equate success with speed. We applaud the new business that explodes “overnight.” We celebrate those who “get rich quick” and then we expect comparable results ourselves.
There’s quick weight loss.
Fast food.
Shortcuts and “lifehacks” flood social media feeds.
There’s even NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month–where thousands of authors push to write an entire novel in a month.
Newsfeeds are full of headlines that teach, “How to Look Like a Pro When You’re New.”
Instant Messages.
Instant gratification abounds via video games, apps on smartphones & tablets, voice-activated devices, even Amazon Prime “upgraded” to “Prime Now,” to address this desire for instant gratification. As if two days wasn’t fast enough, now you can get your delivery via Prime Now in two hours.
The old Heinz 57 commercials used to end with the tagline, “Good things come to those who wait.”
Wait.
I would even argue that “The best things come to those who wait.”
Yes, our world is full of stuff. Much of it is stuff you can get quickly. But is that the stuff you really want filling up your life?
Greatness requires patience. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for simplification and appreciate that I can order groceries via Prime Now and have them delivered to my house when I have sick kids at home. I am grateful for Siri’s quick response when I ask for directions or the weather forecast.
There are three very specific areas in our lives where patience is crucial.
1-Life’s challenges.
We all have them. These aches in life that gnaw at us and refuse to go away. Applying the salve of patience will aid in the healing process.
It’s like the story of the friend who asks you where it hurts then punches you someplace else. Have you ever noticed that when you focus all of your attention on the place that hurts, it seems magnified? Being punched someplace else distracts us, but it doesn’t actually take away any pain. The best solution is to find something better–more positive–on which to focus your attention and energy.
We can walk with patience through life’s challenges by helping someone else. By changing the focus away from our own pain, we invite distraction. But unlike the punch from above, providing service invites joy and light into our aching souls. It doesn’t take away the pain of our own challenges. Instead it magnifies the good and can often make the healing process less painful.
I’ve heard the tale of Thomas Edison’s 1000 tries before succeeding with his invention of the incandescent light bulb. Lots. But did you know that Edison was labeled a bad student? According to the Library of Congress, the schoolmaster called him “addled.” Edison’s mom got mad. She believed in her son and withdrew him from the school then homeschooled him.
But it doesn’t stop there. Did you know that Edison almost completely lost his hearing by the time he was 12? But instead of giving up or feeling sorry for himself, he “often treated it as an asset, since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research.” This is what it looks like to be patient with your challenges.
It is so easy to sit around all day feeling sorry for ourselves or even getting caught up in the injustice of it all. But when we can patiently accept that every life contains challenges and then push forward anyway, we will move beyond merely surviving and into a state of joyful thriving.
2-Developing talents.
We are all good at something. Yes, you are. But no one is born an expert. You may have musical talent, but you still have to rehearse. A lot. You may be good at expressing yourself through words, but that doesn’t make you a poet laureate. You may be good at basketball, but that talent will not get you into the NBA (or WNBA) without years of practice. We will not create perfection every time we open our mouths/pick up a pen/shoot the ball. It doesn’t work that way. No, instead we will make countless mistakes. Our voices will crack. Our words will fall flat. Our shot won’t even hit the backboard. Lots of times. Patience is vital as we seek to develop and enhance our talents.
Talents are solidified into genuine skills when we hone them. When we take those things that we are naturally inclined to do and we do them intentionally day after day, month after month, year after year. Even then, we will not always get everything right on the first try. NaNoWriMo may be a great way to push a writer to flesh out a first draft quickly. But nobody is publishing that draft (and producing a quality novel) without lots and lots of editing and additional drafts.
It has been said, “Success isn’t the absence of failure, but going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm.” This isn’t always easy. But it is true. We will all experience failure. We will all fail. Everyone. It is a natural component to success.
Charles F. Kettering called failures, “finger posts on the road to achievement.”
And Thomas Edison’s story didn’t stop with his inspiring drive despite his loss of hearing. Did you know that he acquired 1,093, patents in his lifetime? He was the inventor of the phonograph. And of all of his inventions, he liked the phonograph the most. But soon after his voice was repeated saying “Mary had a little lamb” through the phonograph, the novelty wore off and the nation lost interest. Edison could have given up. He could have felt betrayed by those fair-weather fans who enthusiastically cheered his success for such a brief time. Do you know what he did instead? He set the phonograph aside for a decade and started The Edison Electric Light Co. He said, “I never quit until I get what I’m after. Negative results are just what I’m after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results.”
3-Dreams/Wishes.
Thanks to technology, impulse buys have expanded beyond the candy stacked beside the grocery checkout to items like new cars and even houses. Seriously. Creditors can easily run your credit history and make a decision within 60 seconds through the wonders of technology. Before you can even think things through, you have locked yourself into insurmountable debt and payments each month that take away your freedom for decades.
The idea of saving up for something we want has become antiquated and often mocked by this new idea of buy now, pay later. We mistakenly think that if we want something, we should buy it. Right now. We pretend it is a need. We may even justify the purchase in ways that make it sound like we are the victims and we have no other options. I get it. I am naturally a spender. I have worked hard (and am still working) at resisting this urge.
Walking through life looks like slowing our pace and sleeping on a decision without rushing into something we can’t afford and will probably regret. There are always options. Often those options are not most obvious or glamorous or even trendy, but they are options nonetheless. And I have come to learn that all decisions always have an unglamorous side–there is always a price to be paid for what we want. We just have to decide if we want to work first and pay for that decision up front and intentionally or if we want to spend years of our lives regretting a decision we made as we pay–and repay–for it.
I can’t tell you how many times each month I make up my mind that I really want something (a new shirt/ new silverware/ new decoration). But because I know of my natural spending tendencies, I walk away for a while. Either literally if I am out shopping or figuratively (I’ll close my web browser or email) if I’m shopping online. I’ll consider whether or not I really do want to own this thing and 95% of the time, I never return to buy it. I have yet to regret those items I don’t purchase, but I can easily recount many times in the past where I have felt buyer’s remorse the instant I sat in my car after leaving a store.
But this walking pace includes dreams we can’t buy, too.
I wished for years to be a mother. I sought specialists and treatments. I wanted results and I wanted them yesterday. I was not patient. This only got me more frustrated and every failed treatment was all the more heartbreaking because I was in such a hurry. But then my heart changed.
I will never forget it.
I was teaching 8th grade English at the time and volunteering with the youth of my church. I sat one night in the back of the room watching the youth at the end of a special event. My heart filled with acceptance. I recognized that I was truly happy in the service I was giving to other people’s children. I was grateful for the opportunities I had been given to serve others and to learn from such amazing young people. I accepted that if this was as close as I ever got to mothering, I would make the best of it. I could walk. I could make the most of the life I was already living instead of trying to run in different directions, not recognizing the beauty around me. I postponed the IVF treatments we were rushing into and started them a few months later in the summer.
The delayed treatments worked! Twins came, and my wish to be a mother was finally fulfilled. I am convinced, though, that they only came after I had accepted the fact that they may never come. Ironically, I accepted that our twins would probably be our only babies and six months later, we were pregnant with a singleton all on our own.
Now as a mother to five children, I look back at those years I struggled with infertility and recognize how much time I wasted pining for the future when I should have been living in those moments and making the most of my life then. I was in such a hurry trying to rush into the next phase of life that I missed out on plenty of opportunities for travel and for learning and for writing (!) that I could have done so much more of then.
Be the Tortoise
No argument for patience can be complete without at least a mention of the age-old fable of the tortoise and the hare. We admire the skills and the methods of the speedy hare, but we want the results of the tortoise. If we truly want to reach ultimate and lasting success, we can’t rush it. We must maintain that slow and steady tortoise pace.
In the immortal words of Jack Johnson,
“Slow down everyone
You’re moving too fast.”
Let’s try living lives of patience. Walk toward joy. Don’t run away from it.
