One of my earliest jobs after finishing high school was working for the cytology department of a laboratory company. As part of that job, after I was promoted from sorting through pap smear slides, I had to call doctors’ offices and tell them that they had to retest women because their original tests were not good enough. It was not an enviable job for a 17-18 year old young man, and the doctors did not want to talk to me, so they would put me on hold for impossibly long times, around an hour at times. Being a fairly stubborn sort of person, I was determined to wait it out, and so I did. I made it a test of wills, my patience and persistence against their rudeness, and generally my persistence won. I suppose, looking at the course of my life, that it was a good thing to develop strength in that way, as it has been tested, often.
I am not patient in all walks of life. While I am patient in waiting on hold, even making jokes about it, I am not patient in all areas of life. One of the few areas of life where my frustration tends to show is driving. For a variety of reasons, I do not get a lot of pleasure out of driving most of the time. As a social person, driving alone is not very fun. As someone who likes flow and hates constantly having obstacles in my way all the time, dealing with traffic is less than enjoyable. As someone who tends to dislike other people getting in my way, finding people who do not flash their turn signals and constantly slow things down through foolish accidents are not enjoyable at all.
I suppose it could be said that I am impatiently patient. It is difficult for me to carefully modulate matters. In some aspects of life, I appear to be in some ways in too much of a hurry, and in other ways not in enough of a hurry. The balance between the two aspects, of knowing when to push and when to relax, is not a balance that is easy to maintain. There are times to hurry, and times to relax and smell the roses and appreciate the passage of time. Knowing what time is which is not a very simple matter. Knowing how to best enjoy and best to proceed is not always an easy matter. In some areas of life, I certainly do not have a great skill of when it is necessary and proper to place the weight on the side of patience and which on the side of impatience.
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What a wonderful post! I have been exactly the same way–waiting for sometimes several hours on hold, stubbornly refusing to yield to others’ will not to perform their own job requirements. I remember one time when I was asked by my boss, the Director of Assisted Housing for the city’s Housing Authority, to contact the local AFDC headquarters office because we had been receiving complaints regarding its lack of service. I placed a call at 1:00 p.m. (the office reopens then after lunch) and was placed on hold. I was still on hold when the office closed for the day at 5:00 p.m. My boss wanted to confirm the reports and WOW did the fir fly! There have been other occasions when, either in professional or personal capacity, I’ve been placed on hold for an unacceptable period of time (sometimes over an hour.) My husband, who is patient in many ways, is VERY irritable in this situation but, for some reason, it doesn’t bother me so much.
I’ve grown more mellow when it comes to driving. Other drivers used to bother me like crazy; the ones who didn’t signal or who didn’t turn their signals off, weave in and out of traffic, dawdle in the wrong lane, aren’t paying attention because they’re on their cell phones, cut you off or follow too closely–you know the kind, etc. I don’t know what happened to me, but I’ve moved on. I stay in the slow lane, moderate the speed to within five miles of the upward limit, keep my eyes on the traffic–and do my best to anticipate whatever may happen (operating under the assumption that at least half of the drivers at any given time are on medication.) 🙂
While I wait interminably in the grocery line behind people with grocery carts filled to the brim in lanes marked “ten items or less” or cashiers whose break occurs just before I’m to be serviced after waiting about 20-30 minutes or, better yet, being kept in line because the system went down or the machine doesn’t read the items correctly–or the EBT card that the person in front of me is rejected–I think, “Give me patience, NOW!” These instances are there to hone our character in developing what we will need: that restraint we must show when we will have the decision-making power to affect people’s lives. I recently looked up the word “Grace” to see how it was rendered in the Greek language. I always thought of it as unmerited pardon, but I found that it also refers to the Godly essence that influences the heart to perceive one’s environment in a different way. The gift of grace provides the power that we need to put our feelings in their proper place and allow our head to take the lead. Amazing grace indeed…
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That is a very worthwhile gift indeed.
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