Counting Days To Give Us Patience

As children we learn, or attempt to learn the lessons of patience very early as we count the days to Christmas, Hanukkah, Birthdays and once in school the time of Summer Vacation.

As we seem to mature we continue the lessons of learning patience, counting the months until we can get our drivers license, legally drink something stronger then Coke-Cola or Pepsi, the days until graduation and Summer Vacation.

We enter the work world, thinking we have arrived at adulthood, what we have been so patiently waiting to achieve, so we can continue the lesson of counting the days until the weekends, holidays falling for a long weekend, and the time left until Summer Vacation.

While being schooled in the lessons of patience, we manage to accumulate stacks of calendar pages littering the roads we have chosen to travel as we learn the most important lessons of patience. Living for tomorrow on some happy and not so happy memories of yesterday.

Oblivious to today, except to be eager to have it gone, for we will be just that much closer to our objective day and perhaps even our Summer Vacations.

While still Christmas we can catch ourselves even speaking out loud,"Next Christmas (insert holiday or event) I am going to ask for, plan for, or have..." Seeming not to notice that what we had aimed for was now here. We even have been known to spend our Summer Vacations planning for our next extended period away from work, school, our so call routine life.

Somehow I have formed the image of humans, seeking patience while planning to learn, never learning a thing as we count the days until we can count the days.

Is that way the more things change, the more they stay the same? Could the lessons of patience really be about learning to be in the now... to see the world, enjoy the world, embrace the world given us today?

Learning to live Today as our Christmas, our Hanukkah, our extended holiday weekend. Taking time to live our Summer Vacation! How else will we know that, that time, day, place we long to be, has come unless we do?

As long as we are so busy counting, everything will stay the same, just beyond our reach, as we continue to count the days.