Patience, it's a funny thing...

View from the family room on Tuesday

Brave Ali leaves WISH Charter to start Georgia O'Keeffe Elementary on Monday

If we think about it, a generation’s lifestyle is fundamentally defined by its technology, or lack thereof.  Consider life before running water. Or cars. Planes. Television. The internet. Cell phones. Our technology dictates how we spend our days, when we come right down to it.
 
With a lifestyle of immediate gratification (everything from "zoom"ing to "fast" food), we feel patience is harder for us (and our kids) than it was for those generations before us.  Tyler seemed hellbent to prove how thin patience really is this week (both his and his parents). He had three days off preschool (thank snow for two of them) and we ran out of ways to say,  “No, you can’t be on the iPad” all day.  In my creative writing, I get impatient by telling rather than showing (telling is quicker! less space too!). Friends in Austin this week felt super impatient for the cold to be over!
 
Of course, our patience is beyond stretched when it comes to quarantining, zooming, social distancing, and yet…here we are.
 
In pondering this, I was reminded that impatience is nothing new, and when acted upon, never quite yields the results we're hoping for.  
 
Lillie Grace is writing a project on President Lincoln, so when her dance class was canceled due to snow, we finally watched Spielberg’s fascinating Lincoln film. Incredibly intellectual and political (critics would say slow moving), the story centers around passing the 13th amendment (abolishing slavery).
 
In 1865 (weeks before Lincoln's assassination) Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens (played by Tommy Lee Jones) is clearly out of patience with Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis) for not passing this amendment (which we in the 21st century hold to be self-evident).  Lincoln tells him, “I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter (4 years prior). Then the border (slave-holding) states would've gone over to the Confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.”
 
Sit with this. Timing (patience) was crucial to abolishing slavery. By steam plowing ahead with the best of convictions,  slavery would have persisted. The Union would have been lost. Trump's stomping ground would officially be the CSA.
 
One of the things that makes Lincoln a truly great leader is his patience, that virtue we all struggle with.  Lincoln took a firm assessment of the reality of his times and acted accordingly. (Case in point: Lincoln’s own Vice-President Andrew Johnson, once he became president, vetoed this slavery amendment twice).  It's so important to assess what*is* against what we *want*, and find the best time to act, not just act when we want. And yet, still act when it is a wise time!!!  It's all a balance.
 
In assessing our current times, our options are pretty much patience and peace or frustration and aggravation.  Even those who get the vaccine will only have the antibodies for a time! At this point, the CDC has conservatively guaranteed three months of immunity, though many scientists are speculating it’s good for hopefully up to three years. Either way, it means we’ll still have to shelve dreams of life as we knew it, (with live concerts and theater) for the rest of 2021.  
 
How did Lincoln maintain patience?  He immersed himself in humor and stories. In light of this, Lillie Grace and I have turned to Humor Seriously, a research book by two Stanford professors. They have collected data on humor, and present levity as a *learnable* superpower that can boost creativity, diffuse tension, build bonds, increase patience, and enhance life.  The average four-year old laughs as many as three hundred times a day (hello Tyler when he isn't thinking about his iPad!!) compared to the average 40 year old, whom it takes 2.5 months to laugh the same three hundred times!! (ahem, this stat even gets grimmer until we reach 81, then skyrockets to laughter! Is this due to not giving a crap at that point? Dementia?) 
 
So far, we’ve found the introduction interesting, but dry for a book about humor. But we’re patient. After all, we have nowhere to go.