And you’re going to have to learn to sit with fear before you can dance with the muse.
Typically we hear the phrase “patience is a virtue” when one person wants another person to can it or not rush them or something along those lines. By default, patience has become another word for silence or non-action, two things we don’t exactly need these days.
Sometimes, to remind ourselves that patience is so much more, we equate it with mindfulness. Yet this, too, is a kind of disservice to the cardinal virtue. For mindfulness requires stopping to take notice, while patience already stopped quite some time ago.
Patience is waiting, actively. Patience is stillness, intentionally. Patience is confrontation most mild.
Show knows that it’s not her turn or that something’s not right. In her knowing she has stopped to sit and keep watch til the tide changes. And it always changes.
And while she sits watching for that first sign of change, she plans what she will do next. Any fear of uncertainty is reminded that the change she has stopped for is the world catching up to her plans. The future isn’t that unknown.
Find something “wrong,” sit with it, and — while you’re sitting there — decide how you will allow the coming change in tide to carry your next move.
Also published on Medium.