A Lesson in Patience

Angela Walter
Jul 30, 2017 · 4 min read

A hard lesson to learn for someone who has none.

I’ve never really been the most patient person. My brain is wired for hard work, productivity, and efficiency. I hate wasting time. I hate anything or anyone who wastes my time, because, to me, time is a very precious and a very limited gift that we must spend wisely. I don’t like to leave any room for bulls**.

Which sucks when you’re in the Army.

A couple of months ago, I found out that I would be moving from Yongsan in Seoul down to Camp Humphreys near Pyeong-Taek, where I would be working at the division level as part of Eighth Army Public Affairs. The process of transferring me from 1st Signal Brigade to Eighth Army was an unreasonably long and painful one. In other words, it was a pretty normal Army process.

We ran into several speed bumps for various and mostly still unknown reasons. The entire thing was super frustrating, and mentally exhausting to deal with. The move date kept getting pushed back, week by week, and every time it did I would lose a little more hope at ever getting to where I was supposed to be.

That might sound a little dramatic, but when you’re in a place you know you’re not meant to be in, it’s hard to really get settled and comfortable and make that place feel like home when you know that at some point in the near future, you’re going to have to up and leave. For several weeks, I was unsettled and uncomfortable, every day feeling out of place and not at home. I was overall angry and sad most of the time, and the ridiculously slow rate at which the whole process was moving was driving me insane. The Universe was testing me: It was trying to teach me how to be patient and calm, go with the flow and let the right things happen in the right time.

Finally, after almost two months, I made the move this past Thursday and am finally settling in to where I will finish out my tour in Korea. I was supposed to move last Monday, but problems with paperwork kept me back. Then it was supposed to be Wednesday, which also didn’t happen. All of my things were taken from my barracks room, and I stayed behind still waiting on the right signature on the right form. After running around like a chicken with its head cut off on Thursday, I finally got that signature and I finally cleared post, gathered the last of my things, and caught a ride with a KATUSA soldier down to Camp Humphreys.

I cannot say with complete sureness that I am a more patient person now, but perhaps when something like this happens again I will be able to handle it with a little more grace and ease. Because at the end of the day, things are going happen and life will move forward. No matter how eternal something might seem, nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary. This isn’t always a good thing, because there are things and moments and people we will always wish to be forever, but at least it’s true for the dark, painful things in our lives too.

Like a screaming fire alarm, for example.

After spending hours unpacking and cleaning my new room after finally making it down here on Thursday night, I took a nice hot shower in my nice new and clean bathroom. It was around two o’clock in the morning, and I was absolutely exhausted from the day. Well, apparently the fire alarm in my room didn’t like the temperature at which I ran my shower, and as I was rinsing the last of my conditioner from my hair the screech of alarms pierced my ears and vibrated my skull. I thought we were being attacked. I almost froze with panic, not because I was afraid that we were actually being attacked, but because the alarms were paralyzingly loud. My ears are still ringing.

It took me a minute to figure out exactly what was happening. I looked out my door and my window to see if the whole building was going off.. Was this a fire drill? Is that a thing we do in the Army? I failed to see any movement from anywhere outside my room, and I pieced together that it was only my alarm going off because of its stupidly high sensitivity to what could have only been the steam from my shower. After overcoming the challenge of keeping my ears plugged and getting dressed at the same time, I made my way downstairs to greet the flashing lights of a fire truck and multiple firemen dressed in full gear who shut off the alarm and ensured nothing was actually on fire. I thanked them, finally ready to get into bed, when two MP’s knocked on my door and asked me about 37 completely irrelevant questions to put on record for the incident. (How much do you weigh? Do you have any tattoos?… This is the futile bullsh** I was referring to earlier.)

My first night in the barracks and I accidentally set off the fire alarm at 2 am, forcing multiple firemen and military police to make an appearance at the barracks. Welcome to Camp Humphreys. I can’t think of a more Angela way to settle into my new home.

Sometimes in life you might be going through a time of painfully loud alarms clawing at your ear drums (and your soul), and it isn’t always easy to not panic. And staying calm and being patient is always easier said than done, but eventually they will shut off. The noise will end and things will move forward, eventually bringing you into more and different noise (or the same noise like when you accidentally set the fire alarm off again a couple days later. That’s… just an example, though).

Such is the pattern of life: a constant ebb and flow of chaos and calm, noise and silence, madness and peace. A little bit of patience goes a long way in this life — something I’m still very much learning.

Angela Walter

Written by

writer // traveler // philosopher // living, loving, learning one day at a time //

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