Patience is a virtue, unfortunately I do not possess it. I have never possessed it. It is something that I constantly have to be aware of and work on. Remember years ago when they used to show people in Russia and some of the other eastern European countries lining up to get loaves of bread or a small piece of meat or vegetables and the lines would be blocks long, in the cold and they would wait for hours. I always thought if that was me, my head would literally explode from impatience.
I got to thinking about my lack of patience this morning at work, when nothing seemed to be going right, or at least the way I wanted them to go, everything was taking sooo long to get done, my head was hurting. The more impatient I was getting the more time the work seemed to take and I just knew it was a conspiracy against me. While at work I usually listen to talk radio, one..because I like this particular woman's show..and two..it's a concrete building and you can only get a few stations, and they were doing a segment on panhandlers. Comments ranged from ignore them to buy them food (coffee, gas, bus ticket) instead of giving money which, unfortunately, is usually not used for the reason given. I have given money to panhandlers before, not much, a dollar or some spare change but I have stopped doing that because I usually don't believe them or I am a little frightened by them (I have watched too many Criminal Minds). The hostess of the show thought along the same lines as I did, but did say that she has helped when she has seen someone who is short a few dollars in front her in the checkout line or doesn't have enough change for the parking meter etc. Now I think of myself as a good person, I have, in the past, found wallets laying in the street, picked it up and called the owner and never once did it cross my mind to take what was in it. I have seen people unaware that they have dropped money and alerted them, I've let people in front of me in line use my store rewards card so they could get the sale price because they forgot got their card. Good person....right?
Now comes my shame....which I was reminded of while listening to the radio show today and it's all because of my impatience. Last summer I was in the checkout lane at the grocery and I had a lot of groceries. In front of me was a 40ish woman in a wheelchair and she had 7 or 8 items she was buying. She handed the cashier her EBT (foodstamp) card and when the cashier swiped it she was short about $4. As she fumbled in her purse looking for some money all I could think of was OMG how long was this going to take. She couldn't find any money but said she had a check she could writte. As she again fumbled in her purse I could feel my impatience rising. Finally, she found the check, s..l..o..w..l..y wrote it out but for some reason it wouldn't go through. I thought my eyeballs where going to shoot right out of my head, after all my ice cream was going to melt if she didn't hurry up, for the love of god. She tried to write another check, still not going through. Now at this point it did cross my mind to just give her the $4 dollars but my impatience was getting so bad I know I was sighing loudly, rolling my eyes and thinking I have so much to do, please just hurry up. Finally after about 15 minutes she ended up putting something back, she apologized to the cashier and then it took her forever to get everything together and move on. This whole time I could just see her from behind, but as she was leaving (she had a motorized wheelchair) I realized she had cerebral palsy. I can say that I have NEVER been so ashamed of myself as I was at that moment. To this day when I think about it I still feel that same level of shame as I did then. Because of my lack of patience I didn't even consider helping her out with the lousy $4. I was too wrapped up in how she was putting me out, making me late and making me have to wait. It was $4 and I couldn't see beyond my impatience to even notice what her problems were.
Since that day I have made an effort, not always successfully, to have more patience, to be more aware of the problems the people around me are dealing with. It is a work in progress, it's uncomfortable, but I was so ashamed of myself that day and I don't want to ever feel that way again.
Kathy
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