Dec 06 2008
Patience
When struggling though the bad times aren’t we really just waiting for an opportunity for change. If you hate your job, or the place you live, or the way you look, or the fact you smoke you have to take action. Sometimes results don’t come right away. Its the waiting that can stop you from going forward with your positive actions. Take weight loss. You might need to lose 20 pounds. So you pick a date and start a diet. The whole week you eat the right foods, you deny yourself the wrong foods, which are usually comfort foods, and at the end of the week you are the same weight. It is at this point, this crossroad, that self sabotage rears its ugly head. The mind convinces you that you will never succeed. And so you eat a gallon of ice cream and a pound of mm’s. Then the guilt of failure eats away at you and you eat more. And then the depression ambushes you and you feel as if life will never get better. It is the same if you are trying to change any behavior you deem unhealthy, or dysfunctional we want the “good” results as soon as we change. Well for some reason I have engaged in this self-defeating behavior all my life. I work hard to do better, to be better and still I never seem to get the results I had expected, or maybe I just don’t wait long enough. Maybe I just don’t stick with it long enough. I know I am impatient. I know I want to be happy now. I want what I want when I want it. What is even more difficult is I know this is not how life works. It is just difficult to stick with something when the rewards take what seems to be forever. I went to college and worked very hard to get good grades. I expected that this would guarantee I would have some economic stability. I expected that this would mean I could be part of the American middle class, you know, decent pay, a home, a car, health insurance you know the June and Ward Cleaver picture, or the Brady Bunch whichever era you grew up in, but I have not found that to be my experience. Instead I continued to have financial insecurity, I am having trouble finding a job, I survive one day at a time and that is depressing. I have been told not to have expectations then I won’t be disappointed. I logically agree that it is in the expectations that the seeds of depression are sown. Expectations of others, expectations of what we should get when we work hard, expectations of what a marriage should be, or a friendship, etc… But it is difficult not to have expectations. It is even more difficult to have patience when we need more than we have at the present moment. I am coming to see my depression as an enemy that wants to take from me the opportunity to change. The opportunity to do a task without expectation but just for the joy of the doing, the experience not the outcome. Maybe then patience won’t be needed because there will be nothing to wait for. Right now I think of the buddhist lessons of doing things slowly and with great concentration and focus so as to enjoy even washing a floor because life is short and no matter how fearful, angry, or sad I may be it is up to me to find peace, only I can free myself from my expectations of what should be and find serenity in what is and isn’t that what I want? Isn’t that what I am really seeking? So for today I will try not to project upon life my wants, needs and desires but try to enjoy the moments as they come to me. I will see what happens and if it works then maybe I won’t have to work so hard at being patient.
