"Patience"

This morning I witnessed a woman on line at the post office,
getting frustrated.... that... as she got to the front of the line, one of
postal clerks was about to take his 15 minute break. She was quite
perturbed...Why couldn’t he just delay his break?... after all,
she had waited....she was next...and... She wanted to be served. She
was also ranting about the automated self serve device which
would not function, as she wanted it too... so... she got stuck having
to get on line in the first place....she was not happy...and... she was
trying to make everybody else unhappy along with her.... the lines
on her face were straining.... “How dare he take his break now?”
The other 2 clerks watched, spoke and were unmoved, calm and
were quite professional....and... Their energy prevailed....and...she
waited.....
I, of course, was next in line behind her...yet... it would probably
never occur to her how selfish she was being... because... it
would have been perfectly fine, in her mind, unconsciously, to
have the clerk take his break, when I reached the top of the
line.......so it could be pinned on me, instead of her...and
incidentally.... there were people behind me....and more people
pulling into the parking lot....and so on and so forth..
People without patience generally don’t understand what patience
is...it can be very confusing.
Patience has nothing to do with waiting...nor time, but
it is an understanding... that there is a order of things which always
has connectivity to others simultaneously...... it’s about blending in
to a natural flow......awaiting your turn...so to say ...letting it
happen...
Much like what happens, on the entrance ramp... when you merge
your car onto the interstate....that lane is long and it is there... to
help you blend into traffic...get up to speed....your actions are
independent, yet are not isolated and what we do is always
connected to others...as we accommodate, so to do others
accommodate us....we are but one connector in a circulation of
events on such a grand scale.. That we can hardly imagine.....
There is no question that collisions in life will always occur,
because of the proximity to others around us....and the individual
level of stress....we feel...just like the women on line...perhaps she
was an extreme example...
A more common example of impatience occurs in everyday
conversations...where people overbear in conversations never
allowing for the other person, or persons, when in a group
conversation, to have their say...
When we become internally aware of this natural flow,
conversations take on such greater value... the inclusion of others
into the natural cycle in a conversation... is far more
meaningful to them than even the content of the ideas they
were trying to convey...It is the openness to inclusion... that unifies and connects us.
Inclusion recognizes that we all are of equal value as
humans.....when the opposite occurs...we dispel each other... as no
greater.... than animals in the pasture.
Patience.... teaches us... to include others.....where impatience
teaches us the opposite....