Patience, Zero.

Patience.

It's a virtue.  Everyone needs a healthy dose.  Some have more than others.  I, however, have little to none.  Of this I am aware.  I'm pretty convinced that whatever patience I was born with ran out in 1980 when we were forced to wait till the fall to see "Who shot J.R.?" on Dallas.

I have always been short on patience, particularly when told to be patient.   It's like telling someone to "Calm down," probably the worst thing you can say to anyone, as if those words will convince an already agitated person to chill.  "Oh, what did you say?  Calm down.  Oh, okay, since you said it, I will.  All better now."

Those who know me well will try to manage me, "Just so you know, we might have to wait."   Being prepared helps, but it doesn't really make it better.   Part of the problem is I'm chronically early, so, even when things start on time, they seem late.  My mother says, "If you're late, you're sending the other person the signal that your time is more valuable than theirs."  Which is a pretty powerful message if you think about it, so I try to never be late, even for people and things that always keep me waiting.

Remember those annoying Heinz ketchup commercials with Carly Simon's Anticipation playing while the ketchup sloooooowwllly made its way down the bottle?   That commercial made me nuts.  Smack that thing!  Smash it on the table!  I don't need to wait that long for ketchup!  It's ketchup for God's sake!  I'll do without, pass the mustard.  Mustard wouldn't make me wait like that.  Stupid ketchup, thinking it's so great that I will wait all day for it.  I will not.

You get the idea.

I read an interesting article today about how we are conditioned to know we will have to wait certain places -- say, for example, online at Disney World, we'll wait for two hours for a two minute ride, but we go to the post office and there's one person in front of us and all of a sudden the sighing, and the stamping, and the groans of "C'mon!!!" start up.

Sighing.  Don't even get me started on sighing.  I know a few "sighers" and I'm sure you know some too.  Make the mistake of asking them a simple question, actually anything at all, and you get enough airflow to power Christina Aguilera's highest note.  But why?  What is so awful about the sigher's life that he or she is so put out all of the time?   Is he the title-holding "World's Most Put Out" person?  I'll never know.  I sometimes like to answer the sigher with, "Is there a problem?"  Because I think it's kind of like a tic that they don't know they're doing, but let me tell you, I don't have patience for it.  Go blow out someone else's eardrum with your mighty wind.

But I digress.  Back to patience.

I feel like we're just getting more and more impatient.  The more technology and services exist to make life easier, the less patience we have.

It's just that waiting, by its very definition, is this purgatory period between things.  I'm not here, or there, I'm waiting.  And waiting isn't doing anything but waiting.  And the more time we spend waiting, the more time that seems wasted.  For me, it's also definitely a control issue -- I'm at the mercy of when someone or something else decides my waiting period is over and the next activity can begin.

Smart and, yes, patient, people have found ways to make productive use of time spent waiting.  They read.  They meditate.  They do crossword puzzles.  They cure cancer.   They play Angry Birds.  They use the Twitter or the Facebook.  They sometimes engage other humans in conversation.

My preferred use of waiting time is complaining and/or stewing.  Usually silently, since I realize that, in most cases, it's no one's fault.  Sometimes I use that time to compose complaint letters in my head about waiting that I will never send.  "Dear Sir or Madam, Today I had to sit for..." Oh, what, wait, it's my turn?  Already? Don't you push me, I'm going, I'm next...

Living in NYC everything is both easy and incredibly difficult, all at the same time.  You have access to everything, but so do 8.2 million other people, so anywhere you go, you're going to have to wait.  So a smart (read: crazy) person comes up with a game plan for everything - post office mid-morning, run out to grab lunch at 11:30, order groceries online, tell everyone dinner reservations are 15 minutes earlier than they actually are so people actually show up on time, drive to Long Island in the middle of the night to avoid traffic.  Everything is planned with military-like precision that would make General MacArthur proud.

Until I embrace waiting for waiting's sake, that's how it's going to be.  But the problem is, it all feels very, well, complicated and hurried, which I guess, is the opposite of waiting. 

Mission accomplished?

So what's better?  Should I slow down and, as Barbara Walters might say, "Take a little time to enjoy the view?"  Embrace the wait?  Learn to enjoy the journey?  To me, the journey is like waiting, so maybe I just need to convince myself that the destination is the journey.

Yeah right.  I couldn't even keep a straight face for that one.

I don't have the patience to wait for that day.  But I can make sure I have a good book on me at all times.  And I'll start referring to "waiting" as "reading."

It's a start.