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Thursday, December 8
The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
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Patient people are more flexible with time than impatient people. Impatient people exist in only one time frame—their own. They are comfortable with only one schedule—theirs.
They want things done when they want things done. And they expect the rest of the world to adapt to their schedule. If they want their child to be potty trained by twenty-four months and he is not by twenty-six, they get angry. If they have to stand in line at the store while an elderly lady ahead of them carries on a brief conversation with the cashier, they get upset because that lady is disrupting their schedule.
Patient people, on the other hand, can flow back and forth between different time frames. They know, for example, that potty training a child may necessitate entering a time frame other than their own. Waiting in line for a few extra moments while an elderly lady chats with a cashier invites patient people to momentarily set aside their own schedule. They enter with compassion the schedule of another, someone who is lonely and who may have more time than she knows what to do with.
Recently I did some creative imagining and took a walk with Patience. When I asked her, “What can I do to become more like you?” she thought for a moment, smiled warmly, and said, “Plant an acorn. . . .Befriend a turtle. . . .Teach a child.”
—Excerpted from Gracious Goodness by Melannie Svoboda, SND
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