Patience is a virtue, that is what they told me all my life, but the truth is, I never thought much about it. I’ve never wanted to wait, I have the tendency to want to find out things, know things, and fix things right away. Waiting for something as simple as a reply to a text, or the results of a test I took always made me feel so anxious sometimes that I couldn’t stand it. In reality though, life will leave you waiting in the area of the “unknown” many times. This is something that I have had to learn to deal with over the years.

One lesson I learned over the years is that timing is everything. There are certain opportunities that you can’t take too early, but there are also ones that you cannot take too late or you risk not taking them at all. For example, when you are in a relationship, whether it be a friendship or a romantic relationship, things can sometimes take a turn for the worst, and things might even become, toxic. The best option in this case would be to end the relationship, but when you end it you don’t want to just end without a reason, as horrible as that other person may be to you, the right thing to do would be to at least tell them why you are ending the relationship. If you don’t give yourself time to think about what you want to say and you do it too soon, you risk totally losing it on them and in a way, making yourself look “weak,” or an emotional mess. If you wait too long though, then you only continue to hurt yourself. Taking the time to figure out what you want to say and how you want to say it takes time and patience. They say good things come to those who wait, and I ignored that statement a lot after walking away from a toxic relationship, because I was too worried about what I was going to do in that moment and what was going to happen to me. It was almost a month later that I realized how true this saying was. It took me time, but I felt better about myself as a person, and I felt more at ease with my life.

Another lesson I learned about patience is that I must be patient with others as well. Especially when it comes to things like my family. My grandma suffers from dementia and for the past few years it has been more than a challenge for me and other members of my family to learn how to take care of her and help her. There were times that I found myself unable to handle the situation and I just completely removed myself from it. I always found it unfair that out of all the grandchildren I was doing the most to try and help out because I was the only grandchild she seemed to remember fully. Overtime though I realized that the situation was what it was and I needed to learn some patience because this was still about helping my grandma and that I loved her and I needed to be strong. She still remembered who I was, she still remembered how much she loved me, and I had to learn to be patient, for her.

Nobody is perfect; it has taken me years to become a more patient person and accept my flaws, but I have learned that becoming a better person is not an overnight process. It takes time for someone to accept themselves for who they are. We must accept our flaws and understand that it takes time to even think about how we can fix them; and in order to make it as successful as possible, we need to be patient. I have learned to accept who I am, emotionally, physically, and spiritually because I have learned to be a more patient person. I have learned how to accept that things will not go the way my way when I want them to, because that is life, and that is how it goes for everyone.