Patience.
In a rush-rush, must-have-it-now world, how do we cultivate
patience?
As we go about our day looking incessantly for answers,
googling furiously as a last resort, do we ever stop to appreciate the
questions?
Patience.
Live the questions.
Deep breath.
Breathe deep.
Patience.
Smile.
Softening of heart.
Gentleness of spirit.
Silence allowed to speak.
Live the questions.
Patience Practice for Today:
When you feel rushed, overwhelmed, or overloaded today, stop
for a moment.
Deep breath.
Breathe deep.
What question are you asking at the moment? (If multiple
questions arise, pick one to focus on. Multi-tasking, for many of us our norm,
makes it hard to practice patience)
Sit with that question.
Walk around it, as if it was a museum specimen. Look at it from
all angles. Appreciate its contours and glow from each vantage point.
You are now living the question!
Today’s piece was inspired by a conversation with a
colleague Irene Mathieu who is a
poet and pediatrician. She implored me to “live the questions”. When I looked
at her in confusion/awe, she pointed me to an early 20th century Austrian
poet Rainer Maria
Rilke who wrote the following:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and
try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are
now written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live
along some distant day into the answer."
I love this one, but wanted to share another perspective. Having worked in food service for almost 4 decades I always say let the questions marinade. When they are done the answer will reveal themselves.
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