More on the theme of patience…
I’ve said plenty in recent posts about how I’m trying to slow things down, and what’s to be gained from that campaign.
Well, there are few things that have tested my patience lately quite like the challenges I’ve encountered in the realm of writing. Meaning, hand-writing. And typing too.
My efforts to speed up my typing on my phone have been positively maddening to me. My kids have urged me to get a clue and give up the single-index-finger, hunt-and-peck method and instead type with both my thumbs like a normal twenty-first century person. I can see the advantage of doing it that way in terms of efficiency…but that assumes you can do it with some dexterity instead of constantly typing the wrong character. Which I do. Like, constantly. Con. Stant. Lee. To the point that typing out just one phrase or line almost always involves going back and correcting several words, if not most of them. I’m still not sure if I can make the switch to typing that way. I’m so thumb-clumsy. Or maybe it’s my old phone? (Yeah, that must be it 🙄)
And now I’m more sensitive to the fact that it’s much the same as I type at this keyboard. So many words I have to go back and correct.
So here’s what I’m concluding: this is a great opportunity to practice the kind of patience I’ve wanted to cultivate in other areas of life. (It’s a test even as I’m typing this post.) If I can bring it to mind and stick with it, I’m enjoying slowing down as I type, making a concerted effort to minimize the misspellings and incorrect characters, so as to minimize my having to go back and fix things. It’s almost…satisfying. Who knew? (It takes longer, sure, but so does walking downstairs when you stop at Stair #7 to take stock of your life. And I’m enjoying that too.)
And as for handwriting, not too long ago I was in the position of having to write out, by hand, around twenty very short cover letters to accompany a brochure that our organization was mailing out. And the letters were almost all identical. Same basic text. Names were changed. And it was so hard! I couldn’t remember the last time I had to write in cursive for any length of time. I mean, write in cursive for other people, in correspondence that was supposed to be neat and legible.
(I have no one to blame but myself for including the word “initiative” in that text I was writing out. You know how hard it was to write that one word over and over, and get all the bumps and swooshes right, and the i-dottings and t-crossings? With each new sheet of paper I dreaded arriving at “initiative” at the end of paragraph #1. I even have trouble typing that word, let alone writing it!)
I came away thinking, not only that cursive writing is a lost art that I’ve lost personally, but also that it might be a nice habit to do some cursive writing on a regular basis. Even just a short note to somebody. It nurtures patience, it reflects personality, it conveys love, it involves eyes and muscles in unique ways.
I’m telling ya, once you make patience a priority, and impatience an enemy, you start seeing it everywhere.