IMPATIENCE HURTS

Impatience hurts. It hurts badly.

When others react and behave impatiently, we do not like it… We brood, cry and sulk. Mostly, when it comes from people who are our superiors – like parents, teachers, principals, bosses or any people in authority. We are unable to express our displeasure and disapproval so easily with them… So, we tend to suppress our feelings, bottle up and brood… keep the anger to boil inside, and then, blast it out somewhere else, on some of our own soft targets!

When our doctors, teachers, advocates, parish priests, and parents, constantly, react to us with impatience, we think hundred times before we open our mouths before them… In fact, we avoid them… We anticipate their reaction at slightest provocation, a small slip from our end… and we block ourselves from them!

All of us have, at least, some people in our lives who are chronically impatient. Most of these people are unavoidable… and, therefore, we have no option but to learn some survival skills to deal with them. Some of us do; and, some of us don’t.

What is interesting is this: even though we know impatience hurts badly… make us sad, angry and sulk… yes, even though we do not like impatience from others, we do exactly the same when it comes to our own juniors: our children, students, staff, and patients… We react and behave with them with similar impatience… say things which hurt, criticize and snub. This is the time, we coolly forget how it hurts those who are at the receiving end of our impatience… we forget that they too feel sad, angry and go into their caves.

This is, really, a crazy cycle… Other do, we don’t like… We do, and others don’t like… Still, it goes on and on!

In my own case, impatience does come up easily when I deal with my students… Luckily, I catch myself, mid-way, indulging in it and change my course… And, there are times, I fail, and, end up causing the damage.

For last few days, I have been telling myself in my mind, “Look at the ‘big picture’.

Now, the phrase may mean looking at the problem or an issue in its total perspective – from all angles – and not just from one, from a narrow angle. But, I have been telling this to myself to remind me not to forget my ‘Final goal’ when it comes to the one at whom I vent my impatience: my student, my staff, my child, my spouse or any one. I remind myself to keep the ‘goal’ in mind: “What is more important – to help your student to develop into a fine human being, or learn to do some fast calculations?” “What is more important: to feel close, loved and safe with my child/spouse or to ‘overplay’ their minor mistakes?”

Yes, this introspection does come to me via its long and bumpy road… But, it does come and save me… It helps me to become a better human being… To really understand, how impatience hurts, damages… It helps me empathize: Just as I show impatience, others, too, do… and, I must give them a chance to make their own amends… while learning to deal with their harshness, and keep my head high and move in life.

True, if I am able to keep the ‘big picture’ in my 

mind, I am not only able to reduce my own 

impatience with others, but also to reduce my 

reaction to someone else’s!

Like those two goats, who had forgotten why it was more important for them to ‘cross the narrow bridge’ and save themselves from the deep and fierce river down below than being impatient and stubborn and lock horns  in the middle of the narrow bridge – yes, like them, we, too, often, forget…

How wise, therefore, to keep the ‘big picture’ – the ‘goal’ – in mind!

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Mehul Bhuva