Don't search...travel.

Patience can be a tough (read: near impossible) thing to master. Patience takes patience, I suppose.  In fact, I think the only way I'm able to be patient is to constantly remind myself to be so.  One of the ways I do this is by trying to trick myself.  What I've discovered is that either I'm very tricky or very gullible, because it seems to work!

I try to view all the things that I'm tempted to be impatient about as destinations that I can see, or at least places whose locations are known to me.  Rather than searching for love, or my purpose in life, or happiness, I'm traveling to these destinations.  This requires a certain measure of knowing yourself and being realistic, which will probably have to be another post all it's own.  Anyway, traveling is fun while searching can be frustrating.  Not knowing where something is makes you anxious, angry, and agitated.  On the other hand just going means, while it may not always be easy, you simply follow your compass.  If you let it be, it is quite freeing.

As for the more mundane needs for patience, i.e. for Christmas, for trips, for that shiny new pocket watch...I don't know if I really have any tricks yet.  I don't have too much trouble with those, aside from the odd up-swelling of excited anticipation.  Really it's just a matter of not fixating on such things so much, I think that's something one develops in time.  Some probably take a bit longer than others, and obviously I can't speak for all adults, but I know I'm much more patient in that regard than when I was nine.  Basically, you just need to chill out.  In any case, I'll think on that a bit.  Just be patient...

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I hate quotations.  Tell me what you know."  Well I know that there have been and will be many a wiser man than I.  So here's a quote from one of them, "Yet the fisherman says, 'Patience.'  Patience dear God--send me an abundance of it!  Although there is no sign of it, the net should, at some time be full." -Abraham Kohn

Ultimately I think it all comes down to trust.  Whether it's in God, the universe, yourself, or something else entirely, find a thing in which to place your trust.  In the end patience is trust.  Thus without trust, you'll never enjoy the happiness that encompasses you now.  I guess that makes lesson 5: trust patience...or patiently trust...something like that.

How do you know?

...I think you just kind of guess.

I don't know if that's helpful, but for me it's quite freeing.   Recently it feels like I'm constantly making decisions that I'm not fully prepared to make.  That can be a rather unsettling feeling, but really it doesn't need to be.  I've come to the realization that, at least for myself, I've been making those guesses my entire life.  Many, perhaps even most, of my big life decisions have been guesses.  Educated guesses...hopefully.  Good guesses...sometimes.  Lucky guesses...probably too many.

I'm not too sure yet, but I think a lot of what this blog looks to explore is hidden in this thought.  Making peace with it, getting better at doing it, and most of all not stressing out over it.  While there are some decision points that are a little less rectifiable (largely the life and death sort), for the most part life is multiple choice.  As in, you get as many guesses as you choose to make.  If you guess incorrectly to start with, guess again.  I firmly know that torturing yourself over a bad guess doesn't improve anything.  I choose to see all of the stupid guesses I make as just part of the thought process for making an educated one*.  In fact, I'm one of the best educated people that I know!

I think the only truly wrong choices are the bad ones that you stick with.  The worst offence being to stop guessing all together.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, once you realize that you made a bad guess, don't stress.  Just make another one.  Hell, make a whole bunch of guesses at once...maybe you'll save some time!  After all, even a blind pig catches a worm once in a while.

Now, for something completely different:

*This can take a lot of reminding yourself to think that way, also it tends to not work until you take a little time to distance yourself emotionally from the decision if it was particularly traumatising. 

Sit and Be

So there's a great book I've been reading recently called "An Optimist's Tour of the Future".  I highly recommend giving it a read.  It's funny, interesting, and it really does give one hope for the world we could have, despite the news reports failing to deliver in that same regard.  In essence it kind of encapsulates many of the finer points of happiness.  Furthermore, it probably played a  respectable role in my starting of this blog.

Anyway, I digress from my real point.  In the book the author recalls a story of a tour boat captain in New Zealand, Tim, who takes a German couple out for a dolphin spotting excursion.  After a few hours of fruitless searching, despite the German man's insistence that they find the elusive creatures, Tim drops anchor in a most tranquil and picturesque little spot.  The captain asks the man, "Do you want to continue looking?  Or would you rather just sit and be?"

Tim recounts, "The funniest thing happened, he looked at me as if I'd suggested the most radical thing ever. 'Sit and be!  he said.  'Sit and be!'--as if it was the first time the idea had ever occurred to him.  He called to his wife.  'Write this down!' he told her.  'Sit and be!' 'Do you want to keep looking for dolphins?' I asked, and he said, 'No!  I want to sit and be!' so that's what we did."

It's pretty clear to me that a lot more of us need to realize that that's an option.  Give yourself some time to plop down and just use your brain...or not use it...or kind of both simultaneously.  You might be thinking that you usually do that anyway, but I think we both know that that isn't what I mean.

Set aside some time each week to erase the constant droning of life from your ears.  Grab a book, or some jazz, a cup of tea...just sit and be.

You don't have to necessarily be sitting, the other day I raced a bus up Queen Anne Ave.  I was on a run, and I had just started up the hill when a bus passed me by and subsequently stopped.  I pushed on past it, and then it started up again.  It was struggling with the hill as well, so I decided to try to keep pace with it.  Passing me again, I pressed on harder and was able to catch up on it's stops.  When we finally reached the top of the hill, we had more or less tied (a little less), but you can be sure that any concerns I had had were fully squeezed out of my mind.

I guess the point is have fun with the world.  Play, think, do nothing!  John Cleese did a really great lecture about being creative, and I think it really can apply to finding a happy state as well.

So again, this week's lesson: go somewhere pleasant...sit...and be.