Learning to Wait

(Image from amir kha's flicker)

Lately I have to keep reminding myself to have patience. My life has rapidly changed in the past year and a half, and due to all of the fast going changes I've had, my natural want is to continue to progress. To work towards what I need in life (whether that is selfish or selfless), and to feel like I am continually moving forward has become a natural state for me. Over and over I have been told to slow down, it will come to you, take life one step at a time, baby steps, things don't happen over night. These are all good pieces of advice, but I haven't been listening.

Today I began to recognize my obsession with goals: publication goals, career goals, personal goals, and how the months have passed by so quickly since I've moved home. Inevitably panic struck. I started to think about the people in my life who are patient, who take one step at a time, and how I want to and need to embrace that way of life. But how? The answer came from googling and stopping at thinkexist.com.

The following are quotes on patience that struck me (some in good fun, some as sincere meditations):

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.

-- Rainer Marie Rilke

Never run after a bus or a man. There will always be another one.

--Irish Proverb

Patience is passion tamed.

--Lyman Abbott

Patience is the art of hoping.

-- Marquis de Vauvenargues

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.

--Buddhist Proverb

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.

--St. Francis De Sales