Impatient re: Patience

I can feel the earth begin to move
I hear my needle hit the groove
And spiral through another day
I hear my song begin to say
Kiss me where the sun don't shine
The past was yours
But the future's mine
You're all out of time

-She Bangs the Drums, Stone Roses

I have never been a patient person. Somewhere along the way it became very obvious to me that there is no reason on earth why I shouldn’t have what I want when I want it. It’s not that I was particularly spoiled. On the contrary, I have just spent a lot of my time being frustrated, I guess. I never got to disappear in a pool of coloured plastic balls (still a fantasy); I never got one of those plastic cars with the yellow plastic roof I wanted; my mother wouldn’t buy me a black leather mini-skirt no matter how much I promised that I would *only* wear it for Halloween (yeah, right); a gazillion people have passed by my life for varying amounts of time and I never got what I wanted from them. Kind of sucks.

So sometime during my university years I did a little reading on Buddhism, and that seemed like an interesting way to calm those urges. And sometime after those years, I took up yoga and that seemed to calm me down a lot. A man who read my birth chart recommended I “sweat” (yoga being an acceptable method) and live by the sea. I haven’t managed the second yet.

My dad says I’m too rigid; that I expect people to be a certain way (ie exactly how I want them to be) and if they’re not I don’t bend. I probably got mad when he said that. My brother and I have chatted about how demanding we are with others, particularly the people we date. We laugh about how ridiculously picky and hopeless we are. I sometimes wonder which of us is really worse. I have certain un-stated quotas of how much attention has to be paid to me (re: answer my emails, call me, make me feel like a priority). My brother is so stern that if someone, say, cuts him off in traffic, he’ll follow the car and somehow –don’t ask me how- he’ll try to “teach them their lesson”. I have a list of people I wish I could teach a lesson to. It keeps growing too.

Today, for instance, I’m blaming my impatience partially on my downstairs neighbours. They’re new, and I’ll bet they have woken me up 50% of the nights they’ve been living below me. They’re either fighting or having sex, usually one followed by the other (and not in the order you’d expect, either). The walls in my apartment are so thin, I can quote parts of their arguments and I can say for a fact that when they screw, it’s over faster than when they argue. Whenever they wake me, I begin drafting a letter in my head that I’ll slip under their door to “teach them a lesson”.

I’m impatient at work when my deadline is coming up and other parts of the project are behind. I try to calm down that anxiety by rationalizing that it can still get done on time… that venting will not help… that it’s not anyone in particular’s fault.

But no matter how much rationalizing and slow breathing I do, no matter how much I control my impulse to throw a huge fit, I can't stop the impatience inside. I’m impatient with people who block the sidewalk and walk too slow. I’m impatient with people who actually drag their feet when they walk. I’m impatient with people who decide it’s time to count their coins when they get to the cash. I’m impatient with people who hold the elevator for other people who are taking forever. I’m impatient with people who can’t make up their minds when it’s time to. I’m impatient with small dogs. I’m impatient with people who don’t get back to me. I’m impatient with friends who obsess about anything that’s not interesting to me. I’m impatient with cashiers and servers who “ignore” me (that’s how I see it anyway). I’m impatient with the week, because it’s not the weekend. I’m impatient with websites where I can’t find the answers to my questions. I’m impatient with people who tell me what’s wrong with me. I’m impatient with strangers’ babies who make a lot of noise for no reason. I'm impatient with people who yell, honk or play the car radio really loud. I’m impatient with noise in general.

Regular yoga, reminding myself that people are not obliged to behave in the Isabel-approved way (but wouldn’t that be great?) and some forms of mental distraction are helpful. But like U2 said, some days are better than others. Sometimes I am just sooo tired of being patient, and that’s when I know it counts the most.