Being Present

Impatience is a way of life in our culture.

Looking for a quick fix is the default method of approaching most challenges we face. We are always looking for an immediate solution to make the discomfort go away, to get the thing we most desire, or to correct a health issue.

Making discomfort disappear is one of our primary fixations. We don’t like pain, physical or emotional, and seek many ways to numb it. We use medications, illicit drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling, overworking, sleeping, and unrelenting use of technology to name a few “fixes”. Many people have come into my psychotherapy office or a meditation class asking for the one thing that can make ___________(you fill in the blank) go away. Many leave disappointed when I tell them there isn’t an immediate fix for their challenges.

Regarding our health, we are so much more ready to take a pill, have surgery, or ignore what is going on with our bodies rather than engage in healthy behaviors. Deciding to engage and implement the behaviors that can correct illness and keep ourselves healthy is challenging. It requires effort, attention, discipline, and commitment as well as perseverance to change our diet, get adequate exercise, schedule to keep a decent sleep schedule, stop eating sugar and saturated fats, or revamp our schedules for more rest and recovery time. Benefits don’t happen overnight and impatience arises and sends off our intentions and goals.

When we want something we are less likely to set a goal and work towards it than we are to put ourselves in precarious positions such as increasing our debt load, raiding the food budget, raising the limits on our credit cards, or borrowing from family or friends. Our need to gratify our every wish takes us deeper into discomfort, then the need for a quick fix rises and we seek some way to not feel trapped and pressured. Impatience, as well as other feelings, underly this fascination with the immediacy of fulfilling our wishes.

When we turn to nature we realize there are no quick fixes, there is no immediacy, and no impatience. A flower, vegetable, or fruit does not suddenly sprout from a seed. It follows a natural trajectory of the integration of time and elements to manifest into maturity. Additional land on a volcanic island does not suddenly appear. The earth grumbles for some time before spewing lava and lava moves slowly down the slope into the ocean that cools it. Even a thunderstorm or tornado does not suddenly appear but rather develops over time due to weather causes and conditions. A river does not start as a large flow. It develops first as a trickle at the headwaters that builds in size and substance as it flows toward the lower point of land meeting up with tributaries from other parts of the land along the way.

For most of us, this sense of impatience and need for immediate gratification follows us into our meditation practices.

Meditative benefits build over time, naturally and through a predictable path. It is not a quick fix for anything. Benefits accrue over time and are dose-dependent. Dose-dependent means the more we do it the greater the benefit, and the sooner we realize them. We may feel some benefit from the very first time we sit in formal practice. However, we are not going to have the same experience every time we do formal meditation practice (sitting practice). Some of our sitting practice sessions can be downright disappointing and generate feelings of disenchantment and disillusionment. Not because the practice isn’t going to generate benefits, but because we want to realize them now, and without immediate gratification, we give up quickly and easily.

We live in impatience and our desire to get immediate results from our practices is just another example of our impatience at work. The slow building of the habit of formal mediation practice and the slow development of benefits from our practices are great for cultivating patience. We are not a patient culture. Meditation can help us cultivate this quality.

Learning to identify our impatience within our meditations, naming the impatience, and continuing to sit with the uncomfortableness of impatience in our body leads us to cultivate the exact benefits we are looking for – a calmer, more mindfully present life that teaches us a healthier way to greet discomfort other than running away from it.