I’m impatient. I don’t like standing in long lines. I stare at the microwave, wondering why it takes so long to nuke my food. As Tom Petty once sang, “the waiting is the hardest part”. I don’t like to wait. I am impatient.
What I am most impatient about is not knowing.
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Sometimes I make random connections. One of those connections is that “impatience” and “impatiens” sound the same.
I recently planted some impatiens. They make a great addition to a backyard flowerbed. They don’t need a lot of care (except for some watering if it doesn’t rain for a while), and they are available in a lot of colors.
Planting stuff in the garden is good for me. I get lost in the moment when I am working in the yard. I forget about the outside world. Sometimes the results are really good, and we have color in the backyard all summer long.
Working in my backyard helps me with patience. I know that any work that I do in April is not going to pay dividends immediately. Sometime in September, I will have something colorful to look at.
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I mentioned that I don’t like not knowing. For example, if I send meeting invitations, or party invitations, and people don’t reply, that bothers me. How am I supposed to run a meeting, or throw a party, if I don’t know who is going to attend?
I wrote an essay a few months ago called “Sometimes The Answer Is No”. That was about dealing with disappointments. But at least when I receive a “no”, I know what the answer is.
Not knowing the answer seems worse sometimes.

Hal