My mother used to say, “Patience is the key to understanding.”
For most of my life, I thought that was simply one of those pieces of wisdom that belonged to her. It turns out she borrowed it from someone else. Saint Augustine said, “Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
I think I’m finally beginning to understand what they both meant.
For most of my life, I was constantly rushing around trying to keep all the spinning plates from falling. I believed that if one of them hit the ground, everything would change—and I didn’t want things to change.
I spent a lot of energy trying to prevent things from going wrong.
Then things happened.
The plates fell.
Some of them crashed pretty hard.
And life changed.
Guess what?
I’m still here.
For years, I’d leave work and rush home because I felt responsible for making sure everything was taken care of. My own needs usually came somewhere near the bottom of the list, unless they involved work. There was always something else that needed to be done, someone who needed help, or some problem that needed to be solved.
I thought that’s what a husband and father was supposed to do. Take care of everyone. Keep things moving. Fix problems before they became bigger problems. Make sure nobody else had to struggle if I could prevent it. What I didn’t understand was that constantly preventing struggle can prevent growth, too.
By putting everyone else’s needs ahead of my own, I sometimes made it easier for the people around me to avoid finding their own solutions. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Quite the opposite. I was trying to help. But helping isn’t always the same thing as doing.
Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do for someone is allow them to experience the consequences of their own choices, struggle through a problem, and discover that they’re capable of solving it themselves.
That’s a difficult lesson for someone who has spent most of his life trying to keep the plates from falling.
My own codependency played a role in that. I became so accustomed to taking responsibility for things that weren’t necessarily mine to carry that I lost sight of where my responsibilities ended and someone else’s began. In trying to protect the people I loved, I sometimes robbed them of opportunities to learn for themselves.
And I robbed myself of something, too. Patience.
Patience isn’t simply waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it’s having enough faith to let something happen without trying to control the outcome. That’s hard for me. I’m still learning.
But I’ve discovered something interesting since the plates started falling: not every broken plate needs to be replaced, not every problem needs to be fixed immediately, and not every change needs to be feared. Some things can simply be allowed to happen.
Some people need room to find their own path.
And sometimes, I need to stop rushing around trying to keep everyone else’s world from changing and trust that I will be okay when mine changes too.
The plates have fallen. Life has changed. And somehow, I’m still here.
Maybe patience really is the companion of wisdom. Maybe wisdom is finally realizing that I don’t have to catch every falling plate.
Now I just need to start to have more patience with myself.