The Great Scale of Patience
“Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.” — Guy Kawasaki
My best friend used to tell me she was the most impatient person in the world and there was no way she could ever be any more patient.
So in an effort to justify her level of impatience, I created a metaphor for her.
The Scale
There is a Great Scale of Patience. She’s on one side with all the other impatient people. On the other, all the patient people. If she were to since even a millimeter towards the center, it would throw this Great Scale of Patience out of balance and the entire world would be thrown into utter chaos.
Seems a bit dramatic, doesn’t it?
About this morning…on compromising
This morning I was having a conversation with another friend about how OCD we both are (not a saying, this is a legitimate diagnosis). She’s married, I’m not. I am also OCPD. If you know what that is, then this situation makes total sense to you.
We oftentimes find ourselves in situations where we do things that are not our responsibility. We see it needs to be done, look in the mirror and say, “Well Jennie, I don’t see anyone else here right now who can do it except you.”
Then we get annoyed others around us, like those we have relationships with (in her case, her husband) don’t notice and do the same thing.
I told her I had always wondered if I could make it in a relationship with someone that didn’t notice those things or do things that needed to be done, but her relationship with her husband gave me hope.
She gave me wonderful advice. She said that she used to think she shouldn’t have to compromise, but compromising has been the secret to their relationship. She doesn’t change who she is, but compromising on things that she expects from him has allowed him to be himself and vice versa.
“A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.” — Ludwig Erhard
Connecting the dots…
This got me thinking.
My best friend, on her Great Scale of Patience, was uncompromising. She never allowed room for anyone else to be who they were because she was always “impatient.”
I believe she was not only that way when it came to her impatience. She was that way in a lot of things in her life.
This would explain why we are not best friends anymore. 😔
The Great Bridge of Patience
Instead of a scale, it should be a bridge.
In my relationship with my best friend, I was constantly challenged to change who I was (a go-with-the-flow, slow-roll person) to meet the demands of her impatience, or whatever other uncompromising piece of herself came out that day.
It was exhausting bending all the time. And as a person with OCPD, this weighed heavy on my anxiety.
I can’t speak for my x-best friend and her state, but she often said she was lonely. I would think this was the reason why.
That’s why I believe that scale, and all other uncompromising pieces of ourselves, should be bridges. We should be willing to move a little bit closer to the other side, not to balance any scales (or unbalance them), but to move closer to each other; to understand each other.
Final Thoughts
Do you have any uncompromising traits?
I definitely do. My therapist, MB, probably has a long list of them in her notepad (I see her writing all the time, it’s gotta be about me 😉).
She even gave me the task to pay attention to those things and find opportunities to “be more flexible.”
She didn’t say I HAD to be more flexible, just to find the opportunities. However, in trying to find the opportunities, I found I inherently was more flexible, because I genuinely want to connect with other people. How about you?
Thanks for reading.
❤️
