Blanketing the ridge
Greens peak through the morning mist
Skyline is revealed.
Watching the morning fog clear off the mountain ridge, I have a sense of what patience means. The peaks are revealed as the process unfolds. It follows no ones drumbeat. It does not punch a time clock. It does not have a watch. It does not hear, or if it does, it does not care about the complaints from anyone inconvenienced by its progression. It is not fast and it is not slow. It is what it is and it does what it does and it does it at the speed just right for its purpose. This, I believe to be the essence of patience, accepting the process as it is.
Google defines patience as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” Hum! I notice this definition does not set any time limits or even time parameters on it, but it does set other limitations or conditions.
As the result of making certain decisions in our life we have been given the opportunity to practice patience and it does not have a timetable. We have been waiting for weeks on word about our new place and we are still waiting. We know it will happen, we just don’t know when, so we wait.
Interesting how the definition uses the phrase “the capacity.” It seems the mountains and the fog have this ability as an innate quality, but, as a human, I need to develop this “capacity.” How to merge my human ways with my natural innate ways is the path I seek. I also notice how this “capacity” is correlated to “tolerance of delay, trouble, or suffering,” and it qualifies it more by placing the parameters of doing this “without getting angry or upset.” Wow! No wonder I have spent so much of my life feeling frustrated and irritated. My intention now is to be patience like the fog revealing the mountain peaks, along with my intention of acknowledging my frustration and irritability without engaging it.
I believe Saskia and I are doing pretty well with this patience thing. Thinking back over the last few years things seem to fall into perspective. I read somewhere a while back that a rut is just a coffin with the ends removed. I liked that. We were in a rut. I spent a lot of time on the computer and Saskia, well she had developed this odd relationship that was triangular in nature: her, the couch and Netflix. She would spend hours on the couch. She would watch a season or two of some series in a day. I marveled at her ability to absorb so much digital stimulation. Her eyes would however, glass over like the eyes of the Zombie creatures on the TV shows and she would often seem to be a shell of herself. We would be in the same room, me on the computer, her on the sofa and we might as well have been in different timezones.
Our communication was shallow, superficial for the most part. We did do things we enjoyed, with people that we liked, but there was just something that did not feel right in our life. An emptiness, a dullness, a sense of having lost the meaning of life.
We had been talking about the move to the mountains for a while and were practicing patience in the Google definition of the word. We were tolerating delay and suffering without really getting angry or upset about it. We would at time have “rational, adult” discussions about our plans; plans I’m not sure either of us really believed would bear fruit. Sounds healthy? Well, it was not.
Hiding or covering the feelings just hid them and allowed us to pretend all was well. Our granddaughter, Erin, calls fake things “pretender.” We were “pre-tendering” everything was ok. But, avoidance in this area of our life just allowed the negativity to emerge in other ways. Saskia was not happy with her job. I was feeling stagnate. There were other ways it showed but I don’t think this picture needs anymore detail. We knew what we needed to do, but fear had been keeping us immobile.
Last Sunday we went on a hike. We went to Whiteside Mountain in the Nantahala National Forest. It is a really nice hike and one that allows us to bring our dogs. The day was gorgeous and the weather perfect for an outing. There are said to be Peregrine Falcons nesting on the cliffs here and I hoped to get a shot or two of some. About halfway through the hike we spotted birds. I was certain they were the Falcons I wanted to see. We would walk the trail and take pictures. The birds were awesome. They would go so high it was almost impossible to see them and then they would soar down to above the trees in the valley at the base of the cliff, becoming almost invisible against the background of the forest trees. At times they would fly in formations of two or three with a precision that I believe the Blue Angel pilots would have acknowledged with respect.
There are rock cliffs here that you can sit on and just see the valley below, the other cliffs on both sides and watch the birds. We laughed and talked. We were not having deep philosophical conversations, but in our conversations we were together. Two small dots in an immense space of natural beauty, and, we were the perfect size, the perfect fit, just right. We did not have to be more. We could not have been less. We just were. We did not have to practice patience, we were patient, not in the Google sense of the word, but of the fog lifting off the mountain peaks sense of the word.
I have been told that the only effective way to deal with fear is to face it, accept it and walk through it. Just for today, the fear that had us so immobilized to a lifestyle in Miami no longer has a hold on us.
Like the birds (which by-the-way turned out to be Black Vultures) knew their wings would keep them safe and soaring on the wind, we know we will be ok.