As I write this, I can count 16 lit candles in my immediate environs.
Extreme? So is the afternoon blanket of darkness which threatens to swallow my positive outlook whole starting at around 4 p.m. Such are the contradictions of this season of lights.
My son recently commented about his affection for the month of December noting how much nicer people are than usual. He lives in the city, and knowing his habits, I’m glad to hear Chipotle servers and Uber drivers are putting their best foot forward.
Are the rest of us?
Not if the number of times I’ve been honked at in the past week are any indication. One driver I saw had a sense of humor about it, his car bearing the bumper sticker “If you hate honking, honk!” But the others? They seemed lacking in that one critical virtue that guarantees a better attitude leading up to the holidays — patience.
I know my patience in these final, frantic holiday and year-end-everything-must-get-done-now days could use some improvement, too.
It’s not just the jam-packed holiday to-do list at fault. Our technology-enabled instant gratification culture has done plenty to make even the most patient saints amongst us in a hurry to gratify and satisfy.
What I didn’t know is that patience can be cultivated, like plants in a garden. While patience is in short supply, tips for developing it are endless, if you search for them on the Web. I’ll summarize the top tips I recently found.
First, though, let’s agree on which kind of patience we want to cultivate, now, right now, before that guy steals our parking spot. It turns out there are at least three kinds of patience — interpersonal patience, life hardship patience and daily hassles patience.
The first, the kind you need to have when your spouse forgets, again, to bring the trash cans in, is self-evident. The second, also known as perseverance, is how you get through hard times. It’s the third I’ll focus on here — daily hassles patience. Put more academically, it is the kind of patience which allows us to develop “the capacity to tolerate the discomfort that arises when things aren’t as we’d like them to be,” according to one mindfulness website.
Apparently, this kind of patience is readily cultivatable! Or so says clinical psychologist Scott Beam, Psy.D., in an article featured by the eminent Cleveland Clinic. “It’s kind of like dancing,” he said. “Some people are naturally better at it than others, but everyone can improve with practice.”
Here is a sample of tips I found with some of my non-academic color commentary.
- Stop multi-tasking (HAHAHAHAHAHHA)
- Use a time-management tool (i.e., something more advanced than the alarm I set on my phone to go off five minutes before every scheduled meeting.)
- Eat healthy (I feel like that tip is on every “be a better human” list, but sure.)
- Choose slow (Is that an actual choice?)
I felt my neck muscles tightening as I scrolled through more tips, while simultaneously checking texts on my phone. Then I found these sort of more do-able ideas:
- Fake it ‘til you make it. Pretending you are patient makes you feel more patient. (I can do that!)
- Increase your tolerance for waiting by waiting longer. (Hmmm, choose the longer line at CVS?)
- Delay gratification by putting your online selections in a shopping cart to review later. (Defeats the point of Amazon Prime but sure.)
- Regularly unclench your fists and/or teeth, and relax your shoulders (Your dentist and chiropractor will thank you.)
- Be playful, don’t take yourself — or your unfinished tasks — too seriously.
Ah, I totally can embrace that last one. So, in that spirit, please see the very first, inaugural, one of a kind, “Everything Will Be Okay” Patience BINGO game, in print, and also linked here.
We will play the “coverall” version. When you do one of the items listed in the squares in the stressful, I mean, festive days ahead, “X” it out on the card.
When you’ve filled the entire card, yell BINGO as loud as you can, even if, especially if, you are in a public place.
Then laugh out loud, again (If you’ve filled the card, you have already done that at least once.) I promise you’ll feel more patient than you really are. If not, then I guess you can try improving your dancing. Wishing you happy, and patient, holidays.
*A version of this column first appeared in the Current in 2022.
Virginia Buckingham is a former president of the Marblehead Current board of directors, a frequent commentator on WCVB’s On the Record and author of “On My Watch A Memoir.” She is working on a second memoir, “As This Mountain” in her newly empty nest and writes a biweekly column for the Current.
Virginia Buckingham
Virginia Buckingham is a former president of the Marblehead Current board of directors, a frequent commentator on WCVB’s On the Record and author of “On My Watch A Memoir.” She is working on a second memoir, “As This Mountain” in her newly empty nest and writes a biweekly column for the Current.
