A few days ago I was facing a couple of situations that I considered to be rather difficult. In my care-giving job my client, an old lady, was creating problems with just about everything – she refused to take the pills, and she behaved completely irrationally, which she showed by verbal accusations. There were also other issues in my personal life that created uneasiness too. At that point I came to realize that I would prefer to have more simplicity and easiness in my life. So, I decided to terminate the job with the lady and quit from the friendship too.
After I had given the termination notice to the family they asked me to stay longer and since then my client’s behavior has improved. It is not that she is nice – but she tries to be more reasonable and her emotions are more subdued. As for me I learnt my lesson too. I still think it is up to us to make choices what we would like to experience in our life. Our life can be made easier or more difficult – there are many options we encounter each day. There is nothing wrong to opt for easier choices. We do not need to fight the struggles all the time; we do not need to become the Olympic winners or rocket scientists. We have the right to choose what is best for us, but at the same time we need to learn to be more patient.
We all have the potential for impatient tendencies. We all have our dreams, expectations, life stories that we would like to come true or we would like to see them develop in certain ways. We would like to make our choices and would like to choose for us the ones that are the most pleasing – which is not always possible. And then we grow irritated with anything that causes delay.
As I walked home today from my client I stopped at the bookshop and grabbed one of Dan Millman’s books from the shelf. Here I encountered one of these synchronicities that accompany the life. As I opened the book I came along a short Zen story pointing towards patience. The story said that a rich man asked the famous Zen painter to draw him a cat. The artist sent the rich man away and asked him to come back in 3 months. When the man returned, he was put off, again and again. Finally the rich man came to visit an artist after one year. This time the artist took a pen and finished a most marvelous image of a cat in less than 30 seconds. The rich man was annoyed and angrily asked the artist: ‘why did you make me wait a year?’ he demanded. The master said nothing. Instead he opened up a cabinet, and out felt thousands of drawings of cats.
