I wait

I can be lazy about things, like being patient.
I tend to want to turn the page at times, before I've digested each word, before the meaning or meat of the paragraphs are sunken in.
I can rush ahead before I'm meant to, because stopping for red lights is more work then revving up at yellow.
I want to see what comes next, as if knowing will change anything about what's happening right now.  And would it?  
Would knowing the outcome in any way affect the feelings I have today?   And don't I love these feelings? I do and after all there is a reason they are mine.
I can know this, yet it doesn't make me suddenly patient.
Nothing but patience leads to being patient.

I looked very automatically to a book, reading something that typically sets me at ease, because when I thought I was easy, I was in fact not.  I turned a page, but it felt thick in my fingers, as if two were stuck together.  I tried for some time to pry them apart, careful not to tear the paper, though it felt tough, it is not.  It's only paper with words on it.  Its only a story and a story is one word at a time, one page after another.   It takes time.  You won't understand it any better if you turn the page before its read and if the pages are feeling glued together, running your fingers up and down the tender edge searching for the undetectable rift will only lead to painful, miniscule slits, which will likely slow the process further still.
Perhaps it's best to study the words again.  Sometimes there is more to learn when you go over things a second time, or maybe more.   Maybe this page is really a poem you'll want to recite later and maybe there'll be some value in knowing it word for precious word.  Once it's understood, it's yours.
You can't always rewrite things later on, after all.
Once I tried to look to the end of my own life book to see whether or not the whole story was worth the read.  Once I thought of throwing it away, jacket and all.  But, I found that the words on the last pages were invisible, as if my eyes were filled with sea water.   Just once, force your eyes to remain open in the ocean, let the rough tide take you down and tumble you a while then surface and look for shore.  You won't see it until the salty fluid flooding your eye sockets, like a wave, recedes.   Then you can focus, then things are clear.
WWMOD?  What would Mary Oliver do?  She'd write it down.  She'd take it out of herself and separate the complicated feeling from what was meant to be felt.  She'd uncomplicate it.  She'd patiently break it down.
Being patient is an activity that is not intended to exhaust me, but it can.  I just have to learn to not let it, which again can only come in time... like all good things.