A discomfort with delay

Impatience is on my mind a lot since I came back from retreat.

I’ve thought about it before, but it struggled for airtime against the more ominous-sounding problems of ignorance and delusion, where I focused my efforts.

Is impatience really a problem? What’s a little rush? Can’t I see things clearly whilst sprinting past everyone?

Unfortunately, the crux of it is that when you’re impatient, you’re constantly wishing away what’s here in favour of what comes next. We know we’re doing this, but justify it as a worthy trade-off. Get through the problem now so that we can spend more time in the Good Place.

But impatience easily bursts its banks, morphing into a general irritation with life and other people. And once you start indulging it, it becomes quite addictive.

I’ve lived my life with that low-level tension that wants to efficiently get something done, to get on to the next thing. In fact, I cherish the impatience. It’s what helps me extract answers from bumbling colleagues, what helps me get to the root of problems and what propels me through my day.

But more and more, it seems to be the primary way I lose contact with what matters. Impatience lifts me off the ground and accelerates me in various directions. I glide from problem to problem without knowing where I stand. The speed also comes at a cost: hours of high-intensity impatience intervals leave me feeling stressed and tired.

I don’t have a great answer to this right now. I just notice the impatience when it crops up. But I can feel something shifting. Impatience is losing its aura. I can see that it’s not the same thing as the qualities it promises. I can experience effectiveness, direct communication and even raw speed without it.

Instead, what I see more and more is a discomfort with delay. A tension between desire and reality. A way of wanting to be apart from my becoming until it’s slightly better.

The fear that if I don’t constantly push, everything will fall apart.