Are We There Yet?
Many of you who’ve met me think I’m remarkably patient and chill. But that’s who I’ve learnt to be when I’m working.
The real story is different. Any of you have cats who have taken “feed me neow!” to an elevated art form? Or kids in the back seat whose timing on “are we there yet?” is impeccable. Yeah, that’s the inside me.
Those of us who like to move fast and operate on impulse find things that take time to be frustrating. Which, honestly, means most of life.
Even those of you who are naturally patient and cooperative must have times when you find yourself drumming fingers or tapping toes or cutting into traffic. Please, tell us you do!
When things are in transition – and if you haven’t yet noticed that they are these days, welcome back from your cave – we’d really like them to settle back into a normal rhythm quickly.
Part of what we’re all dealing with is that pervasive element of community and relationship within community. Cooperation takes time. We often do a bogus version called compromise, where nobody really wins. Competition gives us winners and losers. Cooperation brings us win/win situations. And that kind of sustainable solution takes time. And patience. And learning to take in others’ points of view.
Getting to that stable level of solution isn’t going to happen in a month’s time – or even a year, or a decade. Sometimes we have to find a compromise just to keep peace. But sustainable peace requires that we continue to learn to cooperate with each other. (As always, I am not talking about condoning abuse in any of its forms.)
The more we can keep in mind that we are all truly very different just as much as we are all, at some level, the same, the more realistic we can be in our expectations. If we can treat these differences as adventures, we can move in and out of each other’s viewpoints to return to homebase for processing and integration.
So, if you’re feeling unsettled, perhaps you need more homebase processing time. If you’re feeling frustrated, perhaps you can let go of expectations and let yourself ask more questions. These are not stable times, but a temporary level up in comfort and stability can come out of cooperation. Meanwhile, I’ll send you back to a couple of calming strategy videos for when you need self-care.
