Patience

I internally cringe when I pull the "patience" card. Growing up my mother always said "patience is not the ability to wait... it is the ability to have a good attitude while waiting." While this is still true today, my mind at some point started to warp patience into procrastination. "Look! I'm keeping such a good attitude while I'm waiting for this thing... this thing I'm terrified of, so I'm going to put it off as long as possible and pretend that I'm waiting patiently when really I'm petrified with fear... But I have such a good attitude while doing it!"


It isn't patience. No matter how many excuses I make or lies I tell myself. Patience has nothing to do with it.


In truth I suspect I am a very impatient person. I am impatient with myself, certainly. As frustrated as friends and family have grown with me and my seemingly externally stagnant ways, it falls very short of my own internal whirlwind of monologues and criticisms. But beating myself up doesn't really get me anywhere. So now I really get to dig into what being patient with myself means. I have really been spending some time with myself during my daily meditations, and keeping my personal harsh judgements in check has been a struggle. Meditation isn't about dismissing or ignoring them, but acknowledging them, looking at them, then moving through them. That's the part I've been previously getting stuck on. Moving through them. This has been true for several aspects of my life.


I feel like moving into this new awareness of myself has been like a strange pregnancy. I am both mother and child. The life I want to live is out there, on the outside of this womb of chaos I've built around myself. I have managed to be in active labor for years... Pushing and panting and fighting and straining and stretching... trying to get myself open and ready for one last push out into freedom. I am exhausted and embarrassed that all this fight, all this struggle, has been completely in my own head. The internal chaos was entirely my own. And now, much like my experience with actual labor, I'm in the position to get it done. No more thrashing around and flailing. It's time to focus, breathe, and bare down.


I know what I want. I can see it. I can taste it.


And now more than ever I feel an urgency to get on with it. "Do you feel like you have to push?" God yes... I need to push this out and be free to live my life on my terms, the way that works best for me. But it doesn't happen overnight. And we circle back to patience.


Patience. Not procrastination.