Waiting vs. Patience

I’ve always been impatient: Tapping my foot behind slowpokes in the airport security line, willing people to talk faster during meetings that could have been an email…you know the type. I’m also terrified of being late, which I learned from my father, who never understood that it’s rude to show up to a party 10 minutes before it’s scheduled to begin. (Everyone knows you come late, giving the host a necessary grace period.)

But Carissa Schumacher (one of my spiritual teachers, you can listen to her on the podcast here) explained to me that there is a critical difference between patience and waiting. Waiting carries with it so much expectation—we think we’re being patient, but really we’re waiting. Patience requires a level of faith, a welcoming to the unknown, without prediction, assumptions, or a need for ongoing assurance that you’ll get what you’re “waiting” for.

I am really working hard to cultivate patience, to submit to DST (divine standard time), to letting events unfold in the way they are meant to, without forcing. I’ve found that as I’ve detached from the energy of waiting (with expectation), I’ve become much more clear-eyed about seeing the underlying reason why something happened, or didn’t happen, even if it doesn’t align with what I think I wanted.

It’s a practice though, for sure, but feels like an alchemical key to co-creating with the divine, the universe, etc., which requires letting them take a hand in the unfolding without trying to control the entire process. I’m a work in progress and it’s hard—aforementioned impatience—but so far it hasn’t let me down. Can anyone relate?