Dream career choice
Needing Patience
Some professions are known for needing patience. One of these is teaching. When I was young, my siblings and I played “school,” and teaching became a cool career choice for me. As I got older and discovered my affinity for writing, I dreamt of becoming a novelist, but I was open to having any career that would pay me to write. I thought that would be heaven.
Then, it came time to go off to college and I reverted to the “safe” choice. I survived the “safe” choice of studying to be a teacher for three years and then I bailed. I dropped out of college and got my first full-time job working as a secretary for a company that made high density, high molecular, polyethylene can liners, otherwise known as trash bags. It’s funny how I can remember that almost 40 years later, but I can’t remember the name of one of the board games I played last week.
Dream duties
Loving Activity
When I went back to college, I studied communications and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree. I then became a newspaper journalist, which allowed me to fulfill that younger me’s dream of working in heaven. I recently went through several large plastic totes of newspaper articles and photos that my mom had saved – seemingly of all my work spanning six years. What love and care she put into that – clipping, dating, and stapling when necessary, all of my printed work. She must have had great patience to continually complete that task!
Writing and editing were dream duties for me. They made me happy. The magic of putting words together to evoke feelings for other beings and different situations is completely satisfying for me. I absolutely love words, and putting them in an order that makes them worthy of saving by someone I love matters in an indescribable way.
Recursive experience
Requiring Patience
It takes patience to write well. One must be open to putting words on paper that we all know won’t stay in the composition. The words that get deleted from the final product are necessary for the process, are necessary for the writing journey even though they won’t make it to the final destination. For example, when I started this post, I thought we would be going in a completely different direction, but those thoughts got dropped somewhere along the way.
Besides being open to the recursive writing experience, one must also be willing to let the written words rest on the page for a while. This also requires patience – especially when one is excited about what is written or when a deadline is nigh.
Honed skills
Growing Exponentially
Patience, then, can be beneficial when interacting with others as well as with oneself. It seems to me that patience can be cultivated quite easily when one has compassion because if one is compassionate, one seeks to connect to and understand another. If one has successfully completed that task, one’s patience grows exponentially. One can be patient if one sits fully in understanding and in the present moment. If we sit in the present moment, we have no need to ruminate about the past or worry about the future. Thus, we have all the time in the world to sit with the person or the situation that requires patience.
I can be patient in this moment. It is always this moment, so I can, therefore, in theory, always be patient.
My current career as a tutoring coordinator has allowed me to hone the skills of patience and compassion. I work with a diverse group of people who each process their jobs and work situations differently. One of my goals is to support them wherever they are on their life journeys. This goal of mine gives me plenty of opportunities to seek understanding them and then to show them compassion.
Separate journeys
Being Compassionate
I’m currently reading The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. In it, the Dalai Lama says, “If you approach others with the thought of compassion, that will automatically reduce fear and allow an openness with other people. It creates a positive, friendly atmosphere.”
Through this lens of compassion then, I am able to focus on connecting to others with patience and love. Am I always successful with this? Heavens no! I’ve got many more years of practice ahead of me to achieve even a modicum of success at always being compassionate and patient.
So, was I patient with the person mentioned above by my friend? Yes, indeed, I was. Do I still have traits to work on? Yes, indeed, I do.
Within that patience, I must remember to act humbly with great regard to the other person’s situation and abilities. Although we are on separate journeys, we can still connect with each other if we choose to do so.
Yours truly in compassion and with patience,
Angela Jane