Over the past month or so, I’ve been experiencing what I like to refer to as forced meditation. It’s when life puts me in a full-nelson and whispers in my ear “Relax. No, no, I said relax. Keep still. DON’t MOvE.” I squirm, much like a nerd hemmed up in the hall by the school bully. I struggle to break free to no prevail. And there I stand. No point in fighting it.

This full-nelson has spread across my entire existence. It’s almost as if I walked too fast and life has me frozen on a corner and there Patience and I wait for the life that is meant for me to catch up.

As I stand watching my life sashay down the block toward me, I am forced to learn Patience. Chat with Patience. See what Patience is really about. The more I learn, the clearer my view of life becomes.

Patience is a bottomless well. It quenches angst. It mutes ego.

Patience is understanding that the lesson lies within the time in which you wait. A lesson that will one day undoubtedly save your life if you but understood.

Patience is a virtue and I was always confused by this statement. My mind referenced virtue as akin to morality, goodness and adhering to ethics. And while virtue is all of that, the definition of virtue that affords the aforementioned statement the most truth is “an effective force, power.”

In such an impatient world, where fast food is no longer fast enough, the WORLDwideweb doesn’t present its catch-of-the-day to you quick enough, when instant gratification is the order of the day… Patience is power.

Patience is the power to detach yourself from your ego and survey life from a selfless, humble standpoint. Patience comes along when you realize you don’t know anything.

God has a way of keeping/putting you where you need to be when you need to be there. I can’t name the amount of instances when my father’s lengthy pre-party lectures pissed me off. I’d miss entire parties and go to sleep steaming mad only to learn that the party was shot up and due to my father’s longwindedness my life had been spared. Or the numerous stories of that day when alarm clocks broke, trains messed up and people became inexplicably ill when all they wanted was to get to work on time… how those people, that day, were livid until they turned on the news and saw the destruction caused by the two planes that crashed straight through their offices… how their lives were spared by wrinkles in their well-laid plans.

Patience.

Patience is understanding that you know nothing. Patience is humility. Patience is faith. It’s recognizing a lack of control and being okay with it. Patience is a force to be reckoned with.

Understanding Patience makes it less like a fullnelson and more like a companion waiting on the corner with you, nudging you playfully while reassuring you, “You’re gonna love what comes next; the reward you’ll get for keeping me company.”

I no longer curse under my breath when I miss a train by seconds, when something is postponed, or when my schedule is altered.

Change is the only constant. Once you embrace the fluidity of life and learn to change with it, impatience dies and you begin to live.

Because it’s not about assigning a deadline to get somewhere in life, it’s about experiencing all that happens before that deadline.

The deadline is death; Life, my friends, happens in the time it takes to get there.

paix,

cyu

“Look at me; I am changing.” — Effie, Dreamgirls

Living in NYC, a strong sense of smell can oft-times leave you on the verge of vomiting. My bloodhound nose (the description comes courtesy of a few close friends) is a gift and a curse. I can smell someone in China’s belch on a good day (or bad depending what that person ate.) But today, well, today I wasn’t praying for anosmia. Today it was a gift. Today, I smelt Spring on the way to the train.

It was brief, hidden in a passing breeze but, it was indisputably, finally, Spring.

A plethora of flowers, glimmering sunshine and hopeful love were all packed into that subtle gust. And as it passed it tickled my nose causing me to giggle out loud. It was momentary bliss.

Of course shortly thereafter a plank of cold wind and misty rain pimp-smacked the smile completely off my face *blank stare* and me back into the chill of reality…but for that moment the post-storm ease passed under my nostrils.

It’s been a long winter.

In climate and in mind.

Trial upon trial upon trial.

Storm after storm after storm.

This year has so far been entirely about me learning balance and patience and strengthening my faith. The amount of mental and emotional pain I’ve experienced recently stands equivalent to what a baby must feel when entering the world.

Yes, the mother experiences death-like pain, but people don’t pause to consider what the child feels. Aside from squeezing through an impossibly small and uncomfortable passage way, the baby has to then quickly adjust to a whole new environment. Out of the warmth and into the cold. Out of a sac of liquids into dry air. Cut off from food supply, forced to cry and scream to be fed.

Yes, I am the baby being born and how fitting it is to be born in 2009. The “9″ symbolizing completing the 9th month in the womb. The year I turn 29.

I can feel the warmth. I can sense the ease after the difficulty. And just the whiff that I caught was enough to make me smile all day.

God is good.