Ode to Patience

J., D. and I were watching Bourne Supremacy last night. One of the characters realizes that all is not kosher in spy-land and makes a privy call to the Director. Cut to the the Directors office. He picks up the phone. It is his secretary telling him that the lady is on the line. "Tell her I am unavailable" he says. Cut back to the woman sitting in her office. She looks disappointed but resolutely sets the receiver down and begins to explore other options.

At this point my suspension of disbelief breaks down.

What? She doesn't call him back twelve more times in the next twenty minutes? Send him and email, fax him, send smoke signals? Drive by his house late at night? She just gives up? Clearly this is a fictional character that has no basis in fact.

When did I become so impatient? I think of school, of finishing my degree. I am not exactly patient, but I want to be. I want it very much.

Think of patience, think of patience. Images of some quiet still pond somewhere leap into my mind. "Yeah, why am I not more like that." I think sarcastically. The problem with the image of the pond it that it doesn't engender the physical pain that that I feel when I have to be patient.

I need a new image. I press the palms of my hands into my eye sockets. Think. A toddler dancing on one leg in front of a restroom door with an out of order sign hanging on a nail comes to mind. Better. Now imagine the toddler as a miniature version of me. No, no. too creepy.

Back to the toddler. Do I have this right? Is Patience endurance? In Buddhism it is one one the paramitas, one of the perfections. Not just "good things come to him who waits" but a profound way to cultivate and purify the soul.

It is hard to imagine patience as purifying. I try to think in this way. My mind shifts back to the pond. I think I gave up on this image too easily. Maybe if I were sitting by the pond?

I imagine myself cross-legged by the silvery waters, dark ripples roll through my thoughts.

There is an ode forming in my mind that starts out something like "Oh to have patience, would that it were given to me, but mine is the hand that trembles, mine is the voice that shakes. obligated to act I am asked to sit, mine to offer rather than receive, patience is the gift to give, not the reward I seek."