Patience results in fewer patients
“PATIENCE is a virtue, possess it if you can, seldom in a woman, but never in a man.”
This was one of my favourite ditties that I used to write in friends’ autograph books as a child. I also used it to taunt my brother relentlessly. However, his patience was stretched to breaking point having four sisters to contend with.
Memories of this verse came flooding back to me recently as my daughter has discovered autograph books and as I duly wrote this in her book I pondered over the true meaning.
Sadly it dawned on me that I am not a very patient person, especially when it comes to the children. Nothing infuriates me more than when I want to take them out somewhere and I am in the car, engine running while they faff around trying to find their shoes that are always kept in the shoebox or their fleeces that are always hanging up on their pegs!
This delay makes us late, made worse by the painfully slow driver in front who always seems to appear when you are pushed for time.
I try to keep in check desperately avoiding clock watching but I feel my temper rising like a volcano ready to spit out verbal abuse. I even find myself occasionally getting too close to the said car in a pathetic attempt to try and push them along a bit quicker!
Perhaps with driving we all leave things to the last minute. Then, of course, it only takes that one delay to add precious minutes to our journey that we have not accounted for. So we lose our patience and take it out on the nearest driver.
I witnessed a woman completely losing the plot in a petrol station, as she had to wait longer than she anticipated in the queue to pay for her fuel.
Through her impatience, she was getting more and more stressed. I watched her eventually go back to her car, rev up the engine and wheel spin out into the road. This was promptly followed by a blast of a horn from the poor driver she had just pulled out in front of.
So let us do some soul searching. Why cut up another driver just to gain a couple of feet? Why pull out in front of someone when you could easily wait a few more moments?
Patience really is a virtue.
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