Patience and Excitement

Patience and excitement often go hand in hand. It is easy to be patient if you are not excited. Think of a time when you or someone you know has gotten frustrated with the "failure" of another person because of the slow speed that person was meeting your requests. WE are excited for the finished product, the glichless performance, the efficient machine, the optimized process. Yet, it takes time to get it right.

Sometimes I feel like the whole purpose of certain things in my life is to teach me patience. For example, the current foot/leg injury that I have. I will be fine in a week, but miss some training I would have liked to do. Getting injured this close to two races that I would like to do well in makes me nervous that I will even be able to finish them. Perhaps that is the point, for me to relax and take confidence in the years of work I have put in and be patient as I heal.

How often do we impatiently check the weather on our smart phone instead of stepping outside for a few seconds? Commentators sometimes lament the perceived growing impatience of the world and with good reason. A lack of patience usually doesn't help things. However, there is so much to be excited about today that being patient can be very difficult. Apple will probably be introducing new computers next week, the stock market was up more than 2% yesterday, the olympic track and field trials are in a few weeks, Greece (seriously, you don't even have to mention anything else because the situation seems to be changing so fast), recall elections, healthcare, and mortgages are just a few of the daily things that perk my ears up.

So how can we grow our patience? I feel it takes time. Life experiences that take time to develop to fruition teach us patience. But how can we follow an accelerated path to patience? I am not sure that we can. I think that might be the point.