The other day on the phone my friend dropped the phrase “practicing meditating patiences”. I immediately burst into laughter and tried to wrap my head around all those verbs. “What does that EVEN mean?” I cried with laughter. “Why can’t it just be practicing patiences? Where does the meditating come in? You’ve had too much kombucha today”
And yet here I am writing about it 2 weeks later.
I can’t stop thinking about that phrase.
Patience - I have always understand it as a virtue. But I’m coming to discover it as a physical state, a state that I am still not sure I can fully articulate accurately just yet. Stay with me.
Let us set the scene, it was the first day of summer yesterday and this comes with so many glorious thing. Sun! Tans! Iced Tea! Cottage weekends! But it also makes me incredibly anxious because there is nothing like being in a remote location with a unreliable bathroom, feeling like shit when all your best friends are partying in the sun. Summer trips make me anxious. And when my body is in pain, and I feel like I can’t go to that activity because it’s to vigorous, I get upset. I get mad at myself and for being sick, again. I become inpatient. I become down on myself. And I know that my flair is temporary, and that I usually bounce back. And I know that my body, although hindered by my inflammation disease, is healthy and strong and capable. But I am so tired of feeling sick. And it was sitting with this frustration today that these words came back to me, ““practicing meditating patience”. It takes mental effort to remind myself to be kind to my body. To ok with what I can and cannot do. To be ok with the fact that I really can’t drink alcohol anymore (on paper this seems so petty but I struggle with it). To be ok with saying No to fun summer activities that don’t fit my lifestyle, and to be ok with finding equally fun activities that do fit my lifestyle. I have to make an effort to not compare my life to others.
When I am sick, patience is not an element in one's persona but a mental state of being that requires focus and consideration. And to achieve this takes time.
How it is achieved I am not actually sure… but I did go for a walk today and just repeated over and over and over to myself “practicing meditating patience”, and it drowned out my other anxieties and blue tummy thoughts.
So I thought it was a good place to start.
Stay Gutsy
Tegan