Thursday, November 24, 2005

Patient Protection


TODAY'S QUOTE:
Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci Italian engineer, painter, & sculptor (1452 - 1519)

Patience is a virtue that can be developed and fine tuned with practice. It is a bit like a tree, growing out of a rock, giving hope that even the most barren ground can produce life with time. But to rest there without doing anything is foolish. If you make no effort then patience is just a fairytale wasteland, where dreams only have life inside the boundaries of your own mind.
But plot a course, take a stand, implement a plan, do a deed, then sprinkle it with some patience, and let time march on and anything is possible. The limits set in life are mostly self-inflicted, in one fashion or another, so if you have to suffer impatience with anyone then practice it upon yourself first. Perfect the art of patience on your own plate, before you try feeding it to anyone else.
If I had never altered my abused state, I would still be free of it now. He died, which would have been the case either way. But I gave us both a richer life when I changed myself then had the patience to show him the map to my side. It was far from perfect, yet light years away from what had been my reality before. And I have never stopped growing since my rebirth on Oct. 30, 1993.
I have patience with all who merit it, and many who do not. I use it to my advantage always and to theirs most times. Through trial and error, I find a passage through the dark times and have the patience to still be showing the map to others. I do not bellow hurry up, or shift from foot to foot as if eager to rush on. I wait patiently, until I am certain that they at least possess some understanding of the bigger picture that my map implies. I tell them to chart their own course and travel on, secure in the knowledge that in this one thing I helped create some symmetry out of pure chaos.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!


THINK ABOUT IT
LET IT GROW
THEN DECIDE