Be Patient Towards All That Is Unsolved In Your Heart

I don't do patience. I mean, look at my genetics: my father was a Bipolar Alcoholic who, when you said stop, he laughed. My mother was a single mom struggling to make ends meet with three children-she couldn't afford to slow down. Having patience with others means slowing down and taking into consideration their limitations. I find this incredibly challenging given that I'm a full-tilt kinda gal with "the persistence of a bulldog" (a boss once told me that). I didn't like the metaphor then, and I don't like it any better now (sorry, but I've never been a lover of slobbery, loose-jowled dogs). I must admit, even though it hurts, it fits me. As I mentioned, I was born into a family where persistence was king: my maternal grandma was, as my new book puts it, "a sturdy, stalwart woman who lived through the Great Depression, and who at 12 was left to care for her two younger brothers when her mother died of cancer; she had a no-nonsense approach." During the Summers my siblings and I stayed with my grandparents while my mother worked, and when we five grand children had gotten on my grandma's last nerve, she'd wave a beautifully tapered finger at us and scold: "No more foolishness." When she got to that point, we kids knew it was time to back off. My grandmother even chased off my father who, after my mother left him, hunted us down with a shotgun. My grandmother was nobody to trifle with. This is the stock I hail from, a hearty breed that doesn't take kindly to foolishness (or patience).

Persistence is an admirable quality. Sometimes though, it can get in the way. Like in relationships, which is pretty much what the world is made of; life is nothing but a web of relationships. Sometimes determination works in your favor, and sometimes it works against you. When a bulldog gets its teeth into something it's real tough to shake him lose. In fact, I saw a news report recently where a bulldog got hold of this lady's poodle and had locked down its jaws on it. The owner grabbed a broom and was trying to brush him off but was unsuccessful. Then she grabbed an ax (yes, an ax), and began hitting him on the top of the head with the handle of this ax until he finally released his grip. Suffice to say her poodle Miss. Peppy was rushed to the animal hospital. Or maybe it was a Pit Bull and not a Bull Dog...at any rate, her poodle didn't fare too well. Sometimes we bulldogs don't know when enough is enough. And sometimes we have to get hit pretty hard on the noggin to realize it's time to BACK OFF. Poor Miss. Peppy.

Ranier Maria Rilke, a favorite author-philosopher advises, "Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves." He is advising us to embrace confusion. Wow-that's deep. How do we learn to accept confusion, uncertainty, even fear...to be patient with the mess in our jumbled brains? What I hear him saying is that we must accept that which we do not yet understand (in ourselves, and in others) with grace. Ahhh...the word grace itself makes me give out a tiny sigh and relax a little in my chair. Grace-don't we all want to be the receivers of grace? Yet why do we have such a hard time giving it? There's another voice that springs to mind here, an author/Buddhist Nun named Pema Codron. Pema advises us to, "Lean into the sharp edges," to welcome the uncomfortable instead of chasing it away. I'll never forget reading her best-seller, "The Places That Scare You," because her ideas, though appealing to my spiritual sensibilities, scared the crap out of me! Lean into the sharp edges? Was she serious? Was she even from this planet? Most of us spend our whole lives trying to insulate ourselves from discomfort, pushing confusion as far away as possible. She was advising me to be patient, and not patient with the other guy-patient with myself! Now that's a novel idea. Then it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the other person who didn't understand, or the circumstance that was being contrary. Maybe it was me who didn't understand the other person, and me who was being contrary! (One of those light-bulb moments).

When I am fighting something so hard, or as psychology would say, when I am in resistance to another person or situation, I cannot possibly see the real problem. I am blocking the answer coming to me through my insistence on seeing it from only one angle-MY angle, my narrow perspective. However, if I were to release my GI Joe Kung Fu grip, I could see that the unsolved problems do not all have to be solved today. In my insistence on persistence I've forgotten that I have a whole lifetime with which to work, and that most problems are exaserbated by my inability to simply BE PATIENT and WAIT.

Have you ever noticed that problems (irritatingly so) seem to dissipate the moment you're able to shift your perspective about them? The other day a friend asked what she should do about a co-worker who is terribly overbearing, bossy and just plain "off the chain." I advised her: do the opposite of what you've been doing, which is getting riled. This coworker was used to intimidating people, making everyone around her jump at her bark. I advised her to keep a cool head and IGNORE her. This attention-monger thrives on the ability to intimidate and she does it to get attention. Stop paying attention to her? Problem solved! I asked how it went after she'd pretended this lady was nothing more than a fly on the wall? She reported it had worked beautifully-the lady got bored of harassing her and took her circus elsewhere. Now let's replay this back in slow-mo. It was my friend who adjusted her attitude-not the bossy coworker. The bossy coworker didn't actually do anything differently. She still harangued my friend. It was my friend's willingness to shift her response that turned the tide. My friend's refusal to get upset was the game-changing strategy. We commonly externalize problems, blaming our environment, yet we're seldom able to see that it's our inability to step away from the problem that IS the problem.

I think it's a safe to say that when we're knee-deep in problems we have trouble seeing them objectively. The sanest solution is stepping away from them, or as Pema Chodron would say, be patient with ourselves. Insanity ensues when we insist on having to be right, because in truth, there is no "right way." There is only your way and my way. Unless it's hurting somebody, opinions are just that: opinions. Yet we always assume that our opinion is the right one. Someday I'm going to do an experiment, just for one day, wherein I assume that I am wrong and see what happens. I wonder if I could do it. I'm so used to believing I am right. It's that persistence gene at play again...it sure gets me in a lot of trouble.

I have many unsolved questions in my heart. If I'm patient enough they will all unfold at the right time. I don't have to push or shove to get to the answer, because they are not going to come out of hiding as long as I'm pushing and shoving. Problems are more complicated than we like to make them. Other people do things that we don't like or agree with for complicated reasons. Expecting other people to be uncomplicated just because I'm in a big fat hurry is not helping. There is no right way or wrong way-there is only my perspective and your perspective. I can't make life perform on demand. Instead, I absolutely must accept that I have limited understanding, and other people have limitations. Their limitations are complicated by a lifetime of hurt, rejection and fear, and so are mine. "Beating a dead horse" is not going to make it run any faster.

Slow down, you're moving too fast...be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart.

To see all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0