Pat Schneider: The Patience of Ordinary Things
Everyday I have to wait. I wait for the bus. I wait for it to get to my destination. I wait for traffic to ease. I wait for waiting to stop.
I can get impatient, restless but I am incapable of making anything go faster. I cannot make the bus come right as I am approaching the bus stop. I cannot make the driver go faster because there are cars in front of the vehicle I’m in. We have to wait in line like everybody else.
On average, I spend a month a year just waiting. For a bus to come, it takes 20 minutes. For it to bring me to where I want to be, 40 minutes. Multiply this by two and in a day, I spend two hours waiting. In a month, I’ve had spent an equivalent of two and a half days just waiting. And that’s just for one destination.
In the city where I chose to live in, waiting is next to breathing. How much longer must I wait? I do not want to know.
But waiting though not a master, I must learn. P told me that to take a good photograph, to capture a memory, one must be willing to wait. Perfect moments cannot be conjured. The way the sun’s rays would gently hit a rock and cast a shadow upon the soil, do not come just because a human summoned it. These come when the time is right.
Such are good things in life. They take time. Hence, I must learn the art of waiting. But more than that, I must also learn to recognize when waiting is enough. Just as when a skilled photographer knows when to hit the shutter button.
Full text of The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider
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