Practicing Patience

It’s occurred to me lately that I’ve become less and less patient with every aspect of my life. I remember being in middle school and waiting for our dial-up to connect, and being SO anxious. Screaming at the computer, LOAD FASTER! LOAD FASTER! When we finally switched to cable, it was such a blessing. So fast! But within weeks, I got used to it and was yelling at it to be faster again.

The same thing happened when I upgraded my phone from the 3gs to the 5s. When I first got the 5s, all I could talk about was how much faster it was than my old phone. Now here I am, only a few months later, calling my phone names and getting mad at it when it doesn’t load instantly.

All of these thoughts really came in to play the other day because I was listening to Miranda Lamberts new song ‘Automatic’ while I was driving home in really bad traffic. If you haven’t hear the song yet, here it is:

While I was listening, and getting angry at the drivers around me, if occurred to me: what am I really trying to speed and rush around these other people for? These old people are driving 30mph in a 50mph because they’re able to relax and just go where they’re going. I need to stop feeling like everything has to go my way. Everything has to be the speed of light.

Innovations in technology are wonderful, but sometimes I miss just sitting around a table with a glass of sweet tea playing rummy or war with my family. I miss going outside and exploring the woods, and finding paw prints in damp ditches and trying to identify what they are with my field guide.

I miss just taking a walk and not being bored.

I’ve been trying hard the past few days to practice patience. When I’m driving home, I roll the windows down and take deep breaths to calm myself as I drive, reminding myself to savor the wind in my hair and the sun beating down on me. Things I truly enjoy. You never know when the last time you get to enjoy them will be.

I’ve been trying with Jason, as well. His patience level is extremely low, so I already try to watch my attitude with him, but I find that if I’m patient with him and I take a moment before I respond or follow through with my next action, that his patience grows.

I want to savor the sweet things in life. We don’t have cable, but we do have local channels and Hulu, and we spend far too much time watching both. We need to turn the tv off a little more often and just enjoy each other’s company. We need to save TV for later in life, when we’ve ran out of things to say, haha.

When we cook dinner together, we stay in the kitchen the entire time. We make each other cocktails, dance like silly idiots, and make inappropriate sexual passes at each other. Or, I guess they’re appropriate now that we’re married. Either way. We just have fun. There’s always laughing and joking and I want to savor that. In the last month or so, I’d been snapping at Jason for stupid things. Like if he was joking around with me and wrestling, I would pretend like he had really hurt me so he would stop. I need to learn to just have fun again.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m working on it. And I’m open to any advice that anyone might have to give.