Pondering Patience

One rainy Thursday in the Wimberley Valley, I had just parked my car for my weekly gig as producer for a local radio show. Outside the rolled up window I noticed a mom holding an umbrella over herself and her young daughter, waiting to cross the street. For a split second I thought about grabbing my umbrella from the back seat. But before I could even react, the booming voice of my ego chimed in. “Umbrella?? You don’t need no stinking umbrella!”

As I got out of the car the soft rain fell on my head and began to frizz my curly hair. The woman and child were still standing on the curb waiting for a safe opportunity to cross when my ego spoke up again: “This humidity is going to ruin your hair! Those cars are far enough out. You wait for no one. Let’s go.”

I made a mad dash for the other side and was halfway across before the umbrella-protected duo made their first move. My flip flops splashed through the puddles in the street as I trotted across like a proud prancing pony, leaving the mother and child behind in my wake. Just one more step up onto the sidewalk and I would have successfully made it across without incident. But that didn’t happen, of course.

The slick bottom of my barely-there shoe was no match for the wet sidewalk. It was as if someone had nailed a banana peel to the bottom of my foot and poured oil all over the sidewalk. I can only imagine the scene as it played out like a bad cartoon: legs flying out from under me, arms flailing to defy gravity, my water cup soaring in the opposite direction of my body.

Just as quickly as I splat across the sidewalk, I picked myself back up and was inside the radio station before anyone else could see my water-soaked jeans. Once inside the protection of the glass walled studio I could see the mother and daughter make their way up the sidewalk, arriving at their destination about the same time I reached mine. Minus wet clothes, a throbbing knee and a bruised ego.

Realizing that my lesson of the day was Patience, I started to give myself a good scolding. “What the heck are you rushing around for? Why do you feel the need to force things to happen in your haste, rather than wait for them to play out naturally? You’d be a lot better off right now if you would have slowed down.”

Too often we find ourselves face planting in life over a rushed decision. The universe wants us to have a beautiful existence but we have to be willing to wait for the conditions to be right in order for us to manifest what it is we’re asking for. We can’t expect to plant an apple seed in the dirt and have a fruit producing tree the next day.

So take a minute to pause. Breathe. Feel into your heart space and make your decisions from there. Because flow and alignment are so much more than instant gratification.