📿The Perfect Day

This piece originally appeared on Lodro’s Substack: The Laundry

I am someone who struggles with patience.

If we make a plan to meet people down the street at 4:30pm and no one is ready to go at 4:29pm, I notice something tense up in me. Feelings of guilt ramp up around being late and inconveniencing other people, I feel frustration at running behind, and general impatience ensues.

When I’m good about it, I let it all go pretty quickly. I realize the pointless nature of clinging to something that simply isn’t happening and take a breath. It’s one of the 10,000 things I’m working on.

I recently ran into my friend, Craig, who lives in our neighborhood. He and his wife had a baby boy just days prior so I inquired as to how it’s going. After talking through the sleeping and feeding routines he said, “The whole thing hasn’t really hit me yet. It sort of feels like a vacation where, if I let go of what I think I need to get done on a given day, it’s all sort of fine.”

“That,” I thought, “is patience.”

In the Buddhist tradition, patience isn’t a grin-and-bear it through clenched teeth sort of thing. It’s not about waiting…