Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.
Saint Francis de Sales
French saint & bishop of Geneva (1567 - 1622)
My Irish grandmother had a bevy of colorful sayings which she shared with us while we were growing up. Whenever the four of us clamored for something to happen sooner, she'd turn to us and say "You have the patience of a flea."
I never was very patient, being a Type A. And I wouldn't say that when I acquired my disability, I automatically received the patience I needed to deal with being a quadriplegic. (Yet another myth about disability falls by the wayside.) I'm more patient than I was but there are days when I have a hectic time at work and fret over how long it takes me to do things. Waiting for help is part of the equation. That's not always easy.
However, I've made progress. A few years after becoming disabled, I ran across this quote from St. Francis de Sales about patience. I realized that my frustrations arose mostly from a lack of patience - a trait I always had - not necessarily from what was going on. I had a choice as to how to react to circumstances. And, more importantly, I realized that it was okay to be patient with myself - whether it was in dealing with my tendency toward impatience or the fact that my quadriplegia resulted in getting things done at a slower pace.
I've made some strides with this. I've learned to stop and pray when my impatience descends. And, hopefully, my courage to face these imperfections, as St. Francis says, will continue - and that courage, I know, comes from God.
3 comments:
This post almost answers my question I had about the video of Chris making a sandwich. The question is: does your disability change your sense of patience and time or are you still essentially the same person.
The thing that kept cropping up in my mind was how, even AB, I would often go several days without eating if I was working on a project because it was too much bother and time. Even now, if I didn't have meds to be eaten with meals, I wouldn't eat twice a day (usually I eat once a day, if at all). So spending that much time to make a sandwich is pretty hard to imagine. Is this something that changes over the course of a disability or do you, a few years on, still essentially prioritize the same or have the same level or patience?
Thanks for your comment, Elizabeth. This is a really good question. I think I've adapted my sense of how long things take now. I know I don't sit there while I'm doing things and think about how long it's taking me because it took me that long for the past so many years. I do feel frustrated and could use some patience when I get pushed to go faster or the external demands are on "able bodied time" if you know what I mean. Try as I might, it's still going to take me a certain length of time to do certain things as a quad- nothing I can do to change that.
I prioritize a lot differently than I used to. I'm more willing as the years go on to delegate some tasks that cause pain or are so time consuming they'll put my other responsibilities in jeopardy. But I think this is more an energy /time issue than a patience issue sometimes.
Patience has never been one of my virtues, and I felt very impatient watching that video. I, too, wondered if he took that in stride, or if he were conscious of how long it was taking him. Now I have Bradykinesia, and everything I do, including thinking, is slower. Poetic Justice, eh?
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