Drumming fingers. Tapping feet. Tucking of hair behind an ear, discreetly. Feigned signs of patience. Bit lips, cheeks, tongues. We aren't patient. No one wishes to wait. Things should happen immediately. Wine shouldn't be better after twenty years, cheese shouldn't need to age, and certainly, we all want to grow up. Patience...a lie of a word meant to make things that take so long feel better, because patience is virtue, is it not? Patience isn't learned or obtained, simply tolerated.
Waiting for a bus, the sun to rise, the grass to grow. Life demands patience, no matter how we detest it. Yet, we feel such joy, accomplishment, pride when we wait out something without complaint. That burst, deep within, can be found as a source for the next wait, pause, halt. The world is simply too big for patience to not be a hot commodity. The patient ones fly of the shelves like hotcakes. If you can stand being yelled at for a bit, and not go home completely hating yourself, then surely you're got an ounce of patience? Or you're just in want of a paycheck...
Thirteen, Sixteen, Eighteen, Twenty-One. Milestones on the early road of life. We patiently wait year after year after year for the day when we can see a PG-13 movie, drive a car, vote for our leaders, and destroy our livers. These we require patience for, because the days are long, the months painful, and the years unendurable. The dread sets in further down the twisted path, when we've stumbled one too many times and our patience for the inevitable dwindles. How long until death tickles your ear, when patience is too much too ask?
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