Tag: time

Patience, You Must Have

“Let me this day be
open to what I can
let go of and what
needs to be
taken up.” 
~ Len Freeman, Ashes and the Phoenix: Meditations for the Season of Lent

It is Lent Season, and what I have decided for my Lent journey is to try to forgive and to let go of the negative and toxic feelings that I hold inside of me. I have a Lenten journal, and everyday or so, I write down my thoughts about my day and about how my feelings and actions that day correlate to my faith. Now that I can read my thoughts and see them on paper, I can be accountable for my movements. I am more aware of whether I did really try to be more understanding towards others, and other days, it can be a rude awakening to read about how much of a jerk I was that day and it then becomes a lesson as to how to improve the next time I am faced with a similar challenge.

Reading through my journal, I realize how short-tempered I am and how very little patience I actually have towards certain people. Not to excuse myself of this faulty trait, but I do live in New York City, and this place, this city, just exudes impatience. It is almost as though one cannot live here and be patient because the city just runs on its own timeline. Everything happens in a New York minute. Unless you live here, it is hard to understand that the city cannot run unless things just keep on moving. I, for better or for worse, have adapted to this mentality. New York may be the only place in the world where if someone commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, the people are angry at the person who jumped and will say “What an asshole. They couldn’t kill themself in another way?! Now I am going to be late for work!” I also have come to believe that the jumper is selfish, but not for the reason one may think. I think they are selfish because of the trauma and pain caused to the train operator. I can imagine that they will never be the same after such a tragic event.

I am working hard on my patience, but admittedly, it has been challenging. My first inclination is to resort to the New York attitude and feel exasperation whenever I feel like someone is impinging on my time. I pray and meditate on this often and hopefully I will see some improvement as I work through this with God’s help.

4 Markers

“We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people.  Time to say things to them.  And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like ‘if’.” ~ Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

 
Day 353.  Yesterday, LilG turned fourteen.
 
Like all parents say when they realize their baby is no longer a baby, I say it now as well:  “I cannot believe it.”
 
For me, there are four distinctive markers of passing time:
 
Watching my baby girl transform into a young woman.  
 
The name LilG does not apply anymore. She is much taller than I am. She surpassed me when she was twelve. Her transformation, of course, is not just physical. She is more thoughtful now than she was, no longer having the typical selfish, youthful whims. She has become a planner and thinks about the future. The biggest sign of her transition from being a child and into the stages of young adulthood is her acknowledgement that all [of her] actions have consequences, good or bad, and she has to act in the manner appropriate to bring about the desired outcome.
 
 
Seeing my parents growing older.
 
My father will turn eighty-three this year, and my mother will turn seventy-nine.  Thankfully, they are both in really great health, mentally and physically, and aside from the normal limitations of their age, they are still active in body and sharp in mind.  However, because they live on the other side of the world and because I have not seen them in nearly two years due to the pandemic, it is still a bit jarring to see their faces on video chat and to realize that how I have them pictured in my mind and in my memories, is not how they actually are in reality.  At the risk of sounding morbid, they are both at an age where one starts to wonder how much [good] time they really have left.
 
Experiencing the natural decaying process of my own aging body.
 
Over the years, I have come to accept that my body no longer functions the way that it did when I was in my twenties.  If I am being honest, I will say that it does not even function the way it did when I was in my thirties, or even early forties.  Every year that passes by, I lose half a step, and another joint cracks or is in pain.
 

Realizing that many people who I love are no longer here on Earth.

This one hits the hardest.  My beloved sister passed away twenty-one years ago this month.  Twenty-one years.  She will have been gone longer than she was alive.  I have lost other people in my life, important people to me, whose absences still create a hole in my soul.  When I think of them and how long they have been gone, the reality of time cuts even deeper.