Wait for It...


You know my greatest failing? Patience.

I once spent two years waiting for a relationship to start working. In my early 20s I sat through interminable sessions of "spiritual healing" and "christian fellowship", waiting for some semblance of something worth believing in - or even comprehensible - to be said. And I once sat through a year's worth of theology classes waiting for them to be about something besides internecine squabbles in the early church.

I've been known to spend a year waiting for inspiration to strike to finish a half written story. One time I waited 18 months for a returned phone call - from someone whose last words the previous night were "I love you", and whose words 18 months later were "I hate you".

There's someone I've known for 20 years, who I've been waiting to take the hint that sneering at everyone in the world gets old very quickly. I spent 7 years waiting for my parents to grasp that I knew more about me being gay than they did - I would have waited longer but they decided to develop amnesia on the whole issue.

I wonder how many of us spend our lives waiting for our lives to start. Or rather, I wonder how few don't.

So, having spent the first half of my life being patient - and how the fuck did I get to be halfway through already? - I think the second half calls for some impatience. Not least on the grounds that it may not be a full half.

I've made a start.

4 comments:

  1. Hear! Hear! Cheers for the new outlook and life attitude!

    Life is for the living! So live each day to the fullest, do the things that make you smile and make you happy.

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  2. I've never been convinced patience is a virtue. Being patient with people who are trying their best, maybe, but the rest of them? Nah.

    Also, please don't refer to your life being halfway through - it's a bit of a downer for your fellow mid-thirties-ists... ;o)

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  3. Even more of a downer for those of us approaching the conclusion of our fifth decade!

    Anyway... I don't agree with the patience thing either. Being patient only means there's less time to do the stuff we really want to be doing.

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  4. I want patience, and I want it NOW.

    Perhaps we could swap?

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