Perseverance and Patience
I've been reviewing the last few weeks and months in my journal... Within the last two weeks, I spent time with online pre-check-ins and verifying airline flight information happening at various airports, waiting for wheelchair service to flights, waiting to board and debark plans, and waiting for transportation to & from the airport while remaining patient—very, very patient.
News Flash : Patience isn’t one of my greatest assets. But while I sat this morning with coffee and in my reflections about waiting, I thought about how necessary patience has been in my life. In many ways, it’s been there for me even though I’ve charged ahead with projects all these years trying to create change.
Interestingly enough patience and pushing forward go together like a well-mixed martini cocktail. I’ve seen where setting a goal, and a plan, and then working tirelessly towards it requires patience in getting it done. An element that I realized too, was that for success, It also requires a dedicated and patient team of people working with you. As for myself and I am sure others, we rarely see the value that patience holds while our determination to get it done is operating. Our focus is a fixation on the final product or outcome and not the process itself.
In this moment of reflection, I have gratitude for the process and the years of work I and the many contributors have done to have led us to where we are today. I reflected on all the hard work that led to the creation of the Advance Mentors Workshop, Cultural History Workshop, The Salon Calvin, and The Long Beach Writers Group. Bravo to all the dedicated students and participants I have had the privilege of working with who helped make them a reality.
I also reflected on the discrepancies found in the news media headlines. It reconfirmed, for me, that patience will be needed to create the change we want to see, especially in the perceived World viewed. The uncertainty in the Middle East continues to test patience for a solution as we all hold our breath for what could happen next. This holds for almost everything we read or see as news these days.
As I become aware of my breathing in and out, I consider the concepts of - visions, goals, drive, determination, perseverance, and patience as the key ingredients for creating change—be it political change, social justice change, or more importantly deep personal change.
It had been an ongoing dream of mine to create classes, workshops, and community activities that holistically show care. Especially when people are in states of indecision, or at a crossroads, or midlife crisis. It is times like these, that so many lose track of their health; their values; their needs; and that greater truth, the identity of being the ability to think and create thought. Progress toward goals happens through the ability to bring it into mind... Into consciousness. Which may mean having old thought patterns be nudged and prodded from existence.
It takes patience to understand oneself as consciousness. It takes patience to understand that bold things can happen, but not always on the timeline one hopes for. It takes patience to make something happen, to align with Truth, to make a course correction, or to have a lofty goal become a material truth. Thank goodness for the patience, relentless determination, and perseverance of committed colleagues and students who care enough to stay the course.
We need to understand that an Identity of Consciousness is Equity, that is it allows for equal access for all people... and in work, like the Prosperos Translation® and RHS™ techniques, which gives people a chance to uncover and honor their authentic stories, to go beyond believe in their experiences, and have the courage to voice what they feel they need. Techniques that bring to the chambers of one’s mind, a voice for transformation of what you need and feel. Granted that technique use can require courage, perseverance, and patience to get to the answers which could be unexpectedly good.
May we grant ourselves the virtue of patience and perseverance as we press forward in our lives. May the lens we view our world from be Consciousness and see each challenge as a necessary step toward Truth found in our vision and in our goals, as we open and operate more fully from our Authentic Self as Consciousness, which is always present, and available to us.
Calvin