I’m certainly not one who should be writing about how to have patience because I admittedly sometimes have strong tendencies to hurry things up. I injured my ankle and pushed the envelope of healing by doing to much too soon. I found myself having an even longer period of healing than might otherwise have been the case. We humans all too often expect things to happen more quickly than is possible and then we get upset when they do not. I see this in so many aspects of society.
The whole world was affected by the pandemic. Many people died before we began to take hold of the situation. Doctors and scientists were sharing information to get things under control. It took time and as with any such situation mistakes were made. Sadly far too many people insisted on rushing as quickly as possible to return to normal, ignoring protocols suggested by professionals simply because they quickly grew weary of the sacrifices we were all being asked to make. More lives might have been saved had we demonstrated a bit more patience with the situation instead of expecting perfection from the get go.
A situation resulting from the pandemic was the loss of learning among students. It was only natural that the youngest members of our communities would be negatively affected. They had more on their minds than just learning. As my mother wisely counseled me when I first began teaching, if the child’s situation at home is troubled they will have a very difficult time paying attention and focusing.
So many youngsters were experiencing the deaths of family members and struggling to adjust to remote learning. Little wonder that schools are still attempting to make up for the gaps in knowledge. Nonetheless, some states like mine insisted on very quickly testing students and holding entire school districts accountable for low scores. It seems as though nobody thought that it might have been more appropriate to be patient as the return to normalcy was taking more time than expected. Instead my state took control of a major school district when the better response would have been to support and encourage even small signs of growth.
Our nation has been suffering from inflation but so has virtually every other nation in the world. In fact, our inflation rate is much lower than those in Europe. Instead of being thankful that people are working and that the worst is over we grumble that the improvement in our economy is not as fast as we would like it to be. Once again the lack of patience causes us to overreact to the slowness of recovery.
I remember working in a school that was struggling to get decent student scores on the state test. The subject area supervisors came to our campus to help us devise a plan to raise the scores and improve the learning environment overall. They spent the whole first year teaching us how to analyze the testing data to know where our students’ difficulties lay. Then we had cross campus meetings with the schools in our feeder pattern to share what we had learned so that they might also emphasize our areas of concern as they taught their students. The second year we received extensive training in methodologies designed to make our teaching more focused and interesting. We also had long meetings to redesign our lesson plans and our pacing. By the end of that year our students were indeed performing better but we were not yet where we needed to be. It took about four years for our school to meet expectations and by the fifth year we were exceeding goals in all subjects. We did this because the district understood that getting to that point would take time. They were patient in watching our progress and not asking us to perform miracles overnight.
Our world is riddled with problems but they are rarely solved by quick fixes. The revolutionary war that resulted in the United States appeared to be a hopeless cause initially. If those fighting for independence had lost their will to keep going simply because it was taking too long there would be no United State of America. The same can be said with the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was not willing to accept defeat even as his army lost battle after battle in the beginning of that conflict. The willingness to stick with the plan to keep the union whole was not hurried or abandoned and we reclaimed the United States.
There is very little worth accomplishing that comes out well without patience and determination. We can improve education with patience and hard work. We might stop the march of climate change by patiently working to rid ourselves of habits that damage our environment. There are so many problems that take time and sacrifice to change. Ankles can heal only if there is not a rush to overwork them too quickly. So too it is with most projects that are worthwhile. We can solve the problems of mass shooting but not if we only say a few prayers and add more locks and gates to keep out the bad guys. Life demands that we do things right and sometimes that means we have to also make mistakes and rectify them in the process of moving toward a good solution for problems. It is much like the scientific method. It’s okay if we go down the wrong path as long as we find our way back to where we need to be. Everything requires patience. We would do well to learn how to develop a willingness to do things at the right pace. Most of life is not a race.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 