Yesterday I was involved in a task that required extreme levels of patience. By about 4:00 in the afternoon, I was starting to get that burning feeling inside that told me my patience was running low. I new that I needed to be present and highly functioning in what I was doing for at least another 5 hours. I started having a panicky thought: What if I run out of patience? What if today is the day that I just totally run out of patience? I almost didn't want to let my self ask those questions I guess because I thought that meant the reality was closer than I wanted to believe. I had a really scary moment feeling like that if I actaully lost my patience something terrible and catastrophic would happen. It was like I felt like life would be totally different before and after that moment. But then I let myself really go through it in my head- I allowed myself to answer the question- What would happen if I lost my patience?
My answer to my my own question was surprisingly freeing. If I lost my patience, that is exactly what would happen- I would lose my patience. Life would go on. I would go on. No catastrophic event would follow. I would continue doing the exact task I had been doing. I don't know if this makes any sense, but I realized that patience isn't really anything other than patience, and that made the whole stress of the situation yesterday kind of humorous in a way. It didn't change the way I felt, which was on the broink of losing my patience, but at least I laughed while feeling that way. And I kept going.
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