Have you ever wondered who the most impatient person in the world is? Spoiler alert: I don’t think it’s me, but I do believe I rank pretty high on that list. With more quotes about patience than I took time to read, which should be no surprise to anyone, I decided to skim through a few (linked here), and the ones I did read, really hit home.
I’m not quite sure when the lack of patience set in for me, but it’s something I have long struggled to outgrow. Even now, as a mom, I feel like I’m a broken record when responding to our toddler’s immediacy: “patience, PLEASE.” What can I say though? She gets it honest.
We live in a culture of immediacy, and that’s a straight up fact. With emails, texts, calls, and notifications at our fingertips, people yearn for a quick response, and I’m equally as guilty. I cannot stand to have an unread notification on my phone, or in my social media apps, and it gives me anxiety to my core to leave it unread until I have the time to dedicate to respond or take action. I’m working actively to manage these feelings, and to accept that unless it’s a true emergency, people can wait. In reality, I’ve realized it’s best to wait to respond, especially so that words aren’t spoken and actions aren’t taken in haste, or potentially create more work in the long-run.
Being active on social media, I think it’s hard for most people to feel anything but impatience, especially when people’s lives are at the forefront of our screens. As soon as you “follow” someone, you are immersed in their posts about vacations, purchases, and daily life activities and achievements, and I think that evokes so many feelings, including wanting those things they have, and wanting them right now.
Remember how I mentioned impatience is something I have struggled to outgrow? Well, I’m still working on it. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. One thing that has helped me is to grow flowers. And, yes, I recognize how fortunate that I am to have even a little backyard space to grow flowers.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about growing flowers, it’s that patience is one of the foundational pieces of the process. Growing flowers doesn’t happen in a vacuum. I mean, sure, you can buy plants or plugs from a nursery or grower to get a kickstart, but you’re still going to have to wait for it to get to maturity at some point. Starting flowers from seed or as bulbs and tubers? Now that, my friends, will reaaaaally teach you patience.
There’s been something healing and restorative on my path to improving my patience, and I have growing flowers to thank for that. Not just for the fact that I have to wait on the growing cycles, or having to refrain from cutting a flower bloom too soon, but I’m talking about the actual hands-on process. From researching what flowers would be appropriate to grow, to receiving bulbs and seeds only to have to wait until the ideal time to plant them in soil, and then planning out where to plant things, it’s a very involved process. All I think about during it all is the end result – those stunning blooms – and the promise of being able to share the joy of flowers with others.
And, yet, impatience always, always, inherently, steps in. I remember last year, when I grew my first cut flowers from seeds. I lost a full crop, over 100 zinnia seedlings, because I didn’t have them in the correct growing conditions. I. Was. PISSED. I immediately felt like a failure, and I didn’t even think of money wasted on the failed crop and having to reorder seeds. Nope. What did I think of? I thought about the time it would take to order seeds, have them shipped, replant them, and then be delayed in planting them out. I ended up having a lovely little zinnia crop last summer, but they weren’t the ideal varieties that I wanted to grow again. Perhaps, it was a blessing in disguise to improve the next year’s plan for zinnias.
You know what I have realized during this second cut flower growing season? It’s that I can only control what I can control. Even in the best, most ideal, growing conditions, shit happens. You know what’s currently plaguing some of our roses? Beetles. Want to know what’s decimated some of our perennial, native wildflowers in our yard? The sweetest, cutest, little bunnies. I wanted to support nature, well – here’s to that!
Sure, it’s a long growing process, but wow, when those blooms open. Boy, do they open. They open our toddler’s mouth with “MOMMY, WOW! LOOK AT THIS FLOWER!!!” They open the possibilities for pollinators and other insects and animals to revel in their sweet nectar and delicious petals and stems. They open conversations between me and floral customers, other growers, and cultivators of connection to share the joy that is flowers. They open my mind to embracing patience.
And, if they don’t open? The process of patience has taught me, and I’m sure will continue to teach me, that I cannot expect everything that I wished for to happen right then and there. It means that it wasn’t meant to be, for some reason, and that I will have to reassess if I should keep trying, or perhaps, even move on altogether. Ultimately, I’m learning to recognize when things are out of my control, and continue to develop patience.
I leave you with one final thought, a quote that really hit home for me, and I’m going to leave it below, and continue to try and embrace what it says. Perhaps, it may hit home for you, too:
“Sometimes things aren’t clear right away. That’s where you need to be patient and persevere and see where things lead.” — Mary Pierce
-Jenn
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