What It Means To Have Patience

What It Means To Have Patience

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When I started writing this piece it was 6:25pm, Spanish time, on Sunday, the day of posting. The reason I highlight this is because people think I’m organised, planning ahead, have a vision. The reality is that, most of the time I’m winging it, uncertain, and distracted.

We all have ideas of other people in our heads that are mostly not accurate to the reality of that person. Look how we parse together bits and pieces from our interactions with them, from what we see online. We build schemas for them in our minds and this is how we expect them to be. But the reality is, no one is actually anything like the idea you have of them.

For example, I’m glisteningly aware that my social media feed looks like I’m always doing exciting things. But the vast majority of my days are incredibly ordinary. Go to the grocery shop, go to the gym, do some work, read a book. What you see of me isn’t a full picture. It’s barely even half the picture.

This space has, for the last 8 or so years, been a place for talking about mental health. Not so much giving advice or wisdom as it is me trying to figure out what I’m dealing with publicly. And sometimes that’s difficult. Mostly it feels meaningful. But sometimes it feels like there’s an expectation for me to always be in a good place. I’m the one setting that expectation, realistically. No one else is.

But I suppose I just wanted to say that, just because I openly talk about this stuff, that doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Like I said, you only see a very curated version of my reality. It usually means the opposite. If I’m talking about something it often means I’m currently dealing with that problem. Being able to talk about something isn’t synonymous with dealing with it easily. I can talk about it – that doesn’t mean it isn’t bothering me beyond that.

This post is a bit convoluted. What I’m trying to say is, as many others have before, we all have such complex lives that is quite impossible to tell you everything that’s wrong. Sometimes I can’t even articulate to myself what the problem is, I just know something’s off.

And that’s fine. We just need to be patient. But because we live in a world that detests patience, we can’t always be patient enough to be patient. We want things to be better now. We want things to make sense immediately. But that’s not how it works. We have to wait for the meaning to reveal itself.

Despite what you may see online, people are struggling. That was true of Erbie back in the day. From the outside looking in, everything looked amazing. And I know I have so much to be grateful for, but that doesn’t mean it’s always golden. The last few months have been a trial. But I’m just hoping that patience will get me through to the other side.