Patience Is A Virtue. Just not one of mine!
I will admit that it is a very difficult thing for me to balance. The need to exhibit patience hoping or believing that it will eventually pay off, versus the need to push something or someone along with a greater sense of urgency. Both in my personal and professional life.
If you have been following my posts, you have no doubt gone on the roller coaster ride of my daughter’s struggle with getting to school in the morning. Not the typically “I am running late”, but a deeper struggle that teens often face. I sit in the car for five, ten, fifteen minutes waiting for her to compose herself. Sometimes it can be an hour. This happens with homework, with taking a shower, at times with life. Part of me wants to just scream, part of me believes that patience is what is called for in these situations. Part of me just doesn’t know.
It is not easy.
A couple of weekends ago, I decided to upgrade my MacBook pro to Catalina, the new IOS. I hit a stream of efficiency and decided to make the most of it, until both that and my MacBook crashed. It took two days to reverse the damage done, with the exception of my Outlook database, which needed to be rebuilt. By rebuilt, I mean running an internal program and waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Twice, I impatiently restarted it. Eventually, I figured out that I had to let it run its course.
For eight, completely maddening days.
No, I am not kidding. I had to finally admit that I would be without my computer for a while, leave it at home, docked to my Time Capsule, and wait. Get up in the morning, it was at 17%. Come home at night, it was at 23%. Get up the next morning, it was at 28%. Absolutely. Frustrating. But after a couple of restarts, I really didn’t have an option but to wait it out, and hope that at the end of the cycle, the process worked. At the end of eight days, eight days of pretty much not touching my computer, I came home one evening and saw the most beautiful word…
DONE! SUCCESS!
In this case, patience paid off. Getting frustrated and trying to restart the program would have simply set me backwards again and again. With my daughter, I am honestly not sure. Will my patience work out, allowing her the space to work through her struggles, or should I be pushing a bit harder? I haven’t mentioned work, but I battle through the same challenge – where to draw the line between patience, allowing someone to work through an issue or project, versus my desire to see quicker movement, actions, predicated on the reality that we are expected to drive results.
The reality it, there is no right answer. And if you find it one day, the next day the script will be entirely rewritten. I think the best you can do is assess each situation and make what you think is the right decision at that moment. If anyone has a better solution, I will be standing by, patiently waiting for you to share it….
ANYONE? ANYONE?