Patience

It has always bothered me when people say, "calm down." This seems to fit here, as I write about patience. What does it mean to have patience? Patience with our children; patience with ourselves. Perhaps patience is not the ability to withstand the wait, but the acknowledgment that now is not waiting for something later, but now is where we are at. I don't mean NOW in the Eckhart Tolle sense of the maxim, but now in the present sense of what processes are occurring for us in our more immediate frame of reference.

This is very difficult for a (reformed) perfectionist, a mother of two boys under 6 years, tenured professor and (wanna-be) marathon runner to grasp.

One dictionary I consulted had the word 'calm' as a synonym for patience. Not something I am routinely characterized by friends or family, yet something with which I do hope I can self identify. If calm is something to strive for, a quest for tranquility (i.e. found in a hour alone in the shower, a day at the spa, a run, a coffee with a friend), then it may not be now, but later (and for many moms - much, much later) where we find it.

What if calm is to be found in moments - immediate ones and future ones. Moments we take to decompress, to have our own "time outs," to reflect on the past or to look fondly on some future.

Perhaps patience is not so much the willingness to wait, but the acceptance in where we are. Sometimes we are moving so fast we forget that in search of something else or something later we may be missing the rewarding, "calm" moments given to us now.

I am reminded of the present as gift common truism. What if each moment (even when water is everywhere it is not supposed to be at bath time) really was "for" us, as if wrapped and placed carefully under our Christmas tree? What am I making of this moment? Regardless, the others are sure to follow.