Patience

My best friend and I talk about patience often.  She's a much more patient creature than I am.  Over the years I have learned from my instantaneous mistakes that there is great value in waiting a minute, breathing, allowing "time to tell."  This does not come naturally to me.  What comes naturally is launching head-first into the next adventure.  The benefit of launching is sometimes flying.  The downside, of course, is sometimes crashing.  The benefit of crashing is the lessons.  The downside is the wounds.  The benefit of flying is the breeze.  The downside is that you miss some things on the ground, some people who matter down there, some buildings that had some services you could have used.

I've lost thousands of dollars because of my impatience, either because of car wrecks because I was driving too fast, parking tickets because I was leaving my car too fast, not noticing "do not park here" signs or fire hydrants or someone's driveway that I was blocking, or because of failed business-pursuits--the time I built a darkroom in three days out of my closet, and yeah! I did it.  I was proud of myself.  At 15 I had all the professional equipment I needed in there and was stringing prints up left and right.  Only I was stumbling out with migraines and red spots in my eyes from chemical highs because I was too impatient to properly ventilate it.  You gotta give people like me props, but you also gotta shake your head at people like me.  I know I can do anything.  But that doesn't mean I can't wait a little and do it properly.

I think the thing driving my disdain for patience is a deep-rooted fear that the thing I want or the motivation to get it will no longer be there in the future.  Basically, I fear abandonment.  And, true, there are some moments in your life when you ABSOLUTELY have to do something.  Those moments do not feel optional.  But the other stuff, the stuff that's not life or death, love or loneliness, can probably wait until you can do it justice.