Opportunities, Patience, and Being

Jobs don’t matter, opportunities do. 

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. 

What one can be, one must be. 

Those are some pretty nice wisdom nuggets across those past few December nine journals. I don’t know if the first was a quote or an amalgam of wisdom teachings I was reading at the time, but I like that idea that our particular jobs in life don’t matters as much as our unique opportunities do. People may share connections and networks, but none of us have the same the same experiences, traditions, and tools. Those things that make us and equip us to connect, to serve, and to love our neighbors. What matters most is not the job, but the opportunities to share and connect. We may not always see the fruit of our efforts, but ours is not to worry about outcomes. Ours is to do the work of loving. Which always begins with awareness. 

Awareness is a skill that takes time and practice. It takes patience to develop. Aristotle said that patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. I like that reminder, because I don’t always like developing my patience. Awareness is a skill, acting on opportunities is a practice, and patience is a treasure. One that requires a journey through struggle and adversity. Patience requires us to pause, breathe, and recognize our opportunities to respond rather than react. This is a lesson learned through unpleasant moments, but those bitter moments bear fruit. The resilience to respond in love and with compassion.  

The peak of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is self-actualization. We each have basic survival and safety needs, and as those are met, we are better able to develop our psychological and social needs. Along the way, we gain a foundation to grow as people and achieve our individual potential. Our potential becomes our actual. Maslow says our need to self-actualize is like our need to breathe. But human need for actualization must be preceded by nurturing and developing a foundation of our survival, safety, social, and psychological needs. We need help from our neighbors, and we need to help our neighbors. We’re in this life thing together. We need each other. We need to actualize, and we need to serve. May we do this for our benefit and for the benefit of each other. May we be aware of our opportunities. May we grow our patience. May we be what we must be. 

Photo by Bethany Ballantyne on Unsplash