The Patience Meter is Running.

Day 3 of 100

Many people have told me that I have the patience of a saint, or that I am a very patient if not the most patient person that know. I’m not trying to sound vain but that is how it has been describe to me. I have tolerated a lot of my friends and family because I have always felt that as a cousin, brother, friend that is what you do. You accept the good and bad, no matter how bad it gets.

About four months ago, I had several friends/family members going through some tuff situations. I wanted to be there for support, but several of them shut me out. Which hurt internally but I said it’s a rough patch things will improve. I moved on, didn’t think much of it. Until about month ago, and several of them were still dragging their feet. While I too have been having conflicts, and wanted to talk to additional people about, I could not because these individuals were still struggling and blocking me. Well it was around that time that I realized I was being too patient with people.

I am willing to wait for people to get out of their funk. I am willing to wait for people to finally do something about their situation. But I am not willing to do it for them, or tell them what to do, or continue efforts to help if there are no improvements. I have put myself into so many situations where “Yeah, Ill wait for you.”, “I’ll hang around for a bit, for you.”, “I’ll just pick up after you this once”, and the list goes on. I have waited on so many friends, family, loved ones, that my patience meter is running low on funds.

The Patience Meter is a concept I came up with to look at each friend/family member and think about their situation, behaviors, and their actions. I came up with something a little drastic, because the more I thought about friends being distant, or doing things that only make me say WHAT THE FUCK, etc. The meter is similar to a parking meter found in most cities. You put some change in, you get X amount of time to park there without issues. For X being the amount of time the friendship is ‘normal’. I define normal as there is communication and events going on between both parties. What is not normal is when the friend gets into a bad habit, or situation and they block you out. They will receive Y amount of patience from me.

Example: 1 year of normal friendship, will gain you three weeks of continuous odd friendship/family behavior. The meter builds back up as things are normal for at least Y amount of time. one year of friendship, three weeks of odd behavior, would deplete the meter, and if at the end of that time. Things are still rough then effort to help, fix, or listen to the problem is done, until you’re ready. To fill back up it will take three weeks of normal friendship/family time to fill the meter back up.

The theory makes me sound like a ass, and I do care, but I cannot care enough to where I’m putting in all the effort in communication, events, chores, etc while they’re behaving strangely. It is ultimately up to the individual(s) to get themselves into a better situation because I can only listen or assist so much without being a crutch.