Thursday, January 27, 2011

Patience. Wait For It.


Patience.

Wish I could hurry up and find some.

I once wrote a song that included the lyric:  "I pray for patience, and I need it right this second."  Patience is a quality that I'm impatient for.  Obviously, I need a South Beach Diet for the soul.  'Wait' and 'weight' are homophones, after all.

It almost seems as though patience is something genetic, something you're either born with or you're not.  Like gout.

Actually, I'm not sure if gout is genetic.  Since I'm writing this on a flight to Chicago, I can't Google it without paying eleventeen dollars for in-flight wi-fi.  Guess I'll have to patiently wait till we land.

I always kind of wanted to get gout, just because I've always wanted to use the sentence "Sorry, my gout is flaring up again" in casual conversation during a fine dining experience.  Or, "Pardon me, I'm having a bout with gout."  In fact, if I were dictator of anything, I would dictate that all words containing 'out' should be upgraded to 'gout', simply for entertainment purposes.

Goutside Magazine.  Goutlet mall.  Goutdoor school. Gout in left field.  Down and gout.  Goutback Steakhouse.  Gouter space.  The list is endless.

How does a Canadian pronounce "gout", anyway?

I digress.

Thanks for patiently waiting for me to get back on track.

What makes some people casually let the person with fewer items behind them go ahead in the grocery line, while other people freak out while an elderly lady attempts to find her checkbook?  The foot tapping, the gum snapping, the exaggerated sighs.  The "get a debit card" comment.  The "shop at Safeway.com--they deliver" comment.

It's funny how the speed of technology has completely changed our time paradigm.  I remember growing up with my parents' lightning-slow dialup internet connection, and actually having to set significant amounts of time aside to check my email.  I also had to schedule time when no one else in our family needed to use the phone line.  Which, if you know my parents, was practically never.

Hulu?  All the episodes of South Park, free on Southparkstudios.com?  Crown Point's hilarious YouTube videos (shameless plug)?  Forget it.

On a side note, it's ironic that 'patience' and 'patients' are also homophones.  When was the last time that you had an in-and-out experience with healthcare?  If you're more than 10 minutes late for your appointment, it gets canceled, yet the doctor can keep you waiting, seemingly capriciously, as long as he or she wants.

And, more importantly, why is it that the only magazine that hospitals subscribe to is Cosmopolitan?  Thankfully, I have seized this opportunity to learn all 50 secrets that will drive a man wild.

So what is patience, and where can I get some?

It seems that patience is more of a way of life than a spontaneous feeling.  A deep-seated contentment that allows the individual who possesses it to be happy, despite, or perhaps because of, the ability to put their agendas and schedules on the back burner.  I often feel like patience and productivity can't go hand-in-hand.  Truth is, though, it's the times when I'm the least stressed, the times when I am able to stop worrying about everything that I need to accomplish, that I'm able to be the most creative and the most productive.

I just switched seats.  The guy beside me (truthfully, I thought he was a woman until a few minutes ago) has had verbal diarrhea for the first hour of the flight, not to mention pepperoni-scented burps.  Ironically, I was impatient with the fact that he was impeding my progress on writing this blog.

About patience.

Guess I have a lot to learn.