Patience is just impatience tempered by reality. That’s a nice quote. I don’t think anyone by nature is patient, unless they are semi-comatose. If you want something, you want it now. That’s actually a very profound principle. The nature of life is fulfillment. The Transcendent is eternally fulfilled. When you are awake to the Transcendent, you are awake to a level of your being that is living in a state of eternal fulfillment.
I think people look at their situations and if their situation isn’t exactly what they want, they become impatient. When they become impatient, they become impulsive. When they become impulsive, they just do things that aren’t really in their own best interest. If nothing else, we should rewind that and write it down. Because that’s it in a nutshell right there. There are so many things that we can be impatient about.
Here is a good quote: “Don’t do today what you can put off until tomorrow.” And the other one is, “don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today.” It’s almost like that is the art of action: knowing which quote to apply to each situation. It speaks to the whole thing about patience and impatience, also. “Oh, I’ve got a problem here and I’ve got a situation here and… okay, here’s the answer.” No, don’t do today what you can put off until tomorrow. The answer is not self-evident. So, just calm down. Other times, there is something that needs to be tended to. It’s just sitting there, and I see it just sit there for weeks, and nobody does anything. No. You know what needs to be done, it’s right there, you know how to do it, all systems are go. Just do it. How did Maharshi put it? “See the job. Do the job. Avoid the misery.” Just get it done. You know? I want you to think about those two quotes. Think about how you could apply those quotes more effectively to your life. Think about how the latter one relates to patience and impatience. Ask yourself, how much of what you are doing in your life is victimized by impatience, untempered by reality.
I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed. It’s so busy, there’s so much going on, so much to do. Sometimes when I notice myself just trying to get it done… I don’t think it is ever right to have a task where you just try to get it done. That’s overstated. They call it being in the present, being in the now and all of that. I don’t like those quotes because they get too out there and gets into a spiritual woo-woo kind of thing. Nevertheless, if you’ve got a task and you are trying to just get it out of the way so that you can go do whatever it is that you want to do, that’s not good. Just try to find some satisfaction in the process.
It’s beautiful stuff, isn’t it? Because it’s not about trying to get rid of the impatience. You don’t get rid of it. It’s inherent in the nature of the Transcendent: instant, immediate, eternal fulfillment. You see? But, you temper it with reality. Yeah, I’m going to get this done, but do you know what? I’m not going to get neurotic about it, I’m just going to see if I can, to some degree, be with it.
I think a lot of times if you look at your life and you look at what you’re doing, and you look at what you are trying to just get through and get it done so you can go onto the next, if you stop and think about it, next isn’t that great. Why do you want to get onto next so bad? And then ask yourself what that next is. I think for a lot of people, it is being able to just veg. Here’s a nice quote for you, “Sitting is the new smoking.” You know, smoking is bad for you. And so, everybody gets that now. But now, the cutting edge of what is bad for you is sitting. Sitting has become the new smoking. It’s the thing that people are doing too much of and hurting their health. See it all ties together beautifully. Because how much of your life do you do to try to just get through it so that you can sit? It’s funny.
© Michael Mamas, 1/16
