Have you ever heard someone utter that frantic cry for help:

“God grant me patience – and do it NOW!!”

According to the Webster Dictionary, patience is defined as:

“The capacity to put up with pain, troubles, difficulties, hardships, etc. without complaint; the ability to persevere without losing heart or becoming bored.”

I was reminded of the importance and value of patience this past week while continuing to work on my daily physiotherapy exercises to repair a dislocated shoulder injury. I was seeing some encouraging signs of slow, steady progress, as the flexibility and strength exercises were doing what they were supposed to do. Then, in a flash of foolishness, I decided I could speed things up a bit if I added an extra session each day. Dumb move – and my shoulder muscles very quickly made me aware of that! The result – I had to back off quite a bit for a few days to let the muscles heal some more, and then restart things on my original routine. So much for speeding things up.

As we age, do we become a bit more impatient? Is traffic congestion more frustrating? Do long line-ups bother us more? Do the commercial breaks on TV programs seem longer and longer? Are these situations really becoming more difficult – or are we becoming more impatient as we grow older? I wonder at times if this is a by-product of the aging process. Because of the continuous ticking of our biological clocks, are we more conscious of the fact that time is passing? And that it seems to be doing so at a faster rate each year!

Maybe it’s only because we want to see and do and experience as much as we can, while we can. Life is to be lived – that’s true. But it also needs to be savoured. Moving too fast, trying to cram too much into every day does not really enhance our enjoyment of life. It can actually sap our energy and leave us with a feeling of exhaustion and dissatisfaction.

Our time of retirement is a great time to remind ourselves that “Patience is a Virtue”. Like any other virtue, it improves with practice. I saw this poem many years ago and it is a good reminder about how to enjoy the balance of our lives.

A Lazy Thought

There go the grownups, to the office, to the store. Subway rush, traffic crush. Hurry, scurry, flurry.
No wonder grownups don’t grow any more.  It takes a lot of slow to grow.

Eve Merriam         

…. Some food for thought.                                  

Jim McKinlay,
President