If we are honest with ourselves, each of us have aspects of our personality that we’d like to ‘soften’, aspects which we know can sometimes bring unhelpful impacts to ourselves and others. One of mine is impatience.
This can take many forms from the mundane impatience with inefficiency and ineffectiveness, to the loftier and even more arrogant, ‘why can’t people just get this’…meaning of course see my perspective, see the world as I do. And however benign and beautiful that world view may be, expressing it through the lens of impatience can prevent it from being heard at the very least.
Part of my search has been about seeking to understand what ‘Divine impatience’ might look like – in other words what might be the seed of goodness, the positive value in impatience. Yes, there’s a risk of self-justification of course but what if there is a value? Like other challenging emotions such as anger, irritation and so on, impatience invites us to look at causal factors – what lies beneath the emotion – and then how to best express it in a way that is healthy for oneself and for others/the situation. We know this to be practising a high level of emotional intelligence – a lifelong practise.
Every emotion has an energy – anger for example can bring an energy for reform (handled well). Perhaps at the highest possible levels the essence of impatience could be about making things better, smoother, more respectful of all? You may have other thoughts.
What does feel true when I practise patience is that the quality of my own experience overall improves. It doesn’t mean the inefficiencies or systemic failures don’t exist, but they can be navigated with more calm and equilibrium. Then the other part of me is still present saying ‘yes but we can’t just ignore the problems that exist’. And of course that’s true too. Here now I find myself back to leadership – what is the heartful act of leadership that would inspire those responsible for the inefficiencies, systemic failures and inequities that for me prompt my impatience
When I stay in my calm and balanced place of patience, I think and see more clearly, I connect with new possibilities, my communication is more caring and generous. The upsides of patience are many and clear and yet the habitual pull of impatience persists. So as we come back to acts of leadership perhaps the message to self is…in what way can we (I) take more skilful and inspiring action that might actually help the situation rather than just satisfy the itch of being indignant at others’ challenges that don’t suit me?
And when we look at our world today, one thing is for sure, our patience is being tested at every corner so surely creative solutions rather impatient whinging must be the way forward?