Patiently Impatient

It is finally November 2nd. Tomorrow is the big day – the election in the US, which has been unsettling us, tormenting us, scaring us, and making many of us wish that politics would fall off the face of the earth.

So, it’s all going to be over on the third, right? Well, not necessarily so. They say with all the mail-in ballots, we may not get the final results for days or even weeks. “Oh no,” says our weary mind. “More confusion, divisiveness, lies, and endless political ads! I have had enough of that!”

But what would happen if the seemingly endless election cycle carries a great gift for us. The gifts come from the understanding that we live in what I called the bubble of struggle. Imagine the most beautiful ocean you can. This is the ocean of being and it represents who you truly are. But floating on the ocean is a small, opaque bubble, which is the bubble of struggle. This is where most people live, thinking about life rather than actually experiencing it. They may not even be aware that they live almost exclusively in their minds, cut off from the joy of simply being, struggling with big and little things all day long.

How do you come back to being? Not by trying, for that is just more struggle. You come back to being by learning how to see and not get caught in the struggles of your mind. So, on November 4^th, we will all have a great opportunity to see one of the favorite struggles that make up our busy minds and that is impatience.

The definition of patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.  And yet there is seemingly so much to be upset about right now that It is very seductive to be impatient. For instance, our lives have been hijacked by a virus. Politicians keep on exaggerating, blaming and lying. We may have waited on hold forever because so many businesses are working with a skeleton crew. Or the line for voting is seemingly endless. It feels almost natural to become inpatient at these times, but we don’t realize the price we pay for being impatient. It cuts us off from being present for life, which is where all the good stuff is.

We also don’t see the physical and emotional price we pay for our impatience. Amit Sood, the founder of a department that researches impatience at the Mayo Clinic, said in an interview with CBS, “Impatience is not simply the opposite of patience. Rather, the absence of patience brings anxiety, illness, injury, loneliness and even death.  An episode of explosive anger, stress or impatience can increase your risk of heart attack and sudden death by two to eightfold for the next few hours!”

He also went on to say something very startling. “Impatience, or a lack of patience, can affect your longevity. Telomeres are the little tales at the end of each one of your chromosomes. The shorter they are, the older you are. And people who are impatient have shorter telomeres.” In other words, impatience shortens your life!

We have a hard time understanding what we have control over and what we don’t. In situations where we have little or no control, it is so easy to become impatient, but we do have the choice whether to react or respond. When we react with impatience, we pay a heavy price. The more we learn to unhook from impatience and instead respond with patience, the more we cultivate ease and peace.

Stephen Levine would say there is no such thing as patiently waiting. You’re either waiting or your patient. Look for those times when your mind goes into the hyperdrive of impatience and discover that you do not have to be run by its upsetting and unsettling energy.  Instead, you can relax and open. Impatience is an invitation to step out of the bubble struggle and rest in open awareness for this is it!  This is the moment where you can actually be present for your own life exactly as it is.

So, you have little or no control over how long it is going to take the ballots to be tabulated and you have little or no control over how much unsettled and even violent energy that may show up in the days after the election. And you may have little or no control over your impatience at this point in your life. But the invitation is to get to know impatience. (And be patient in learning how to unhook from impatience!) Recognize that you pay a heavy price for getting lost in this state, and when you can, simply acknowledge impatience.  If that is all  you can do, that is enough for it is a moment of stepping out of the bubble of struggle and seeing what your mind is doing rather than being at the mercy of it.  And even two seconds of this kind of recognition, over time, makes a difference.

And the more you do this, the more you will be able, when impatience shows up, to breathe yourself back into this moment and say something like this to yourself, “I choose to let go of impatience and instead be present for my life right now.”

Slowly, when impatience shows up, you discover you can simply let it go and instead open into the joy of being present for life.  Most of us, on our deathbed, would give almost anything to stand in a long line again, or wait on hold forever, or listen to endless political ads because we would finally see how precious every single moment is.