Friday, April 4, 2014

A Work in Progress

I realize that when God created me he left out two very important aspects - patience and tolerance. These are two qualities that I have been working on my entire life, but I have yet to grasp the ability to do either. The lack of these abilities often causes a good day to turn sour real quick. As in, I'm merrily going about my errands (after persuading the hubby to watch Tay so that I can do them in two hours rather than five) with my jam-packed To-Do list in hand and - BAM - out of nowhere I'm stuck behind a lady in the checkout line disputing a $0.10 off coupon. Really!? Here's a dime, please move it along. Or I just want to run into Sam's Club to pick up my three cans of formula and a box of diapers and the Direct TV guy stops me of all people and engages in conversation. Most people would just keep walking, but it deeply disturbs me to be rude to people (odd, I know). Rather, I politely listen to his sch-peal knowing all the while that I already have the service he's selling and, therefore, listening to him ramble on is nonesense, but I've been in sales before so I empathize with the guy. But still, after an afternoon full of these encounters, what little patience I did have is now gone.

So then I feel bad, and I try to put myself in that person's shoes: "That poor lady is probably skimping to get by and maybe she really did need that extra dime" or "He's just doing his job and trying to put food on the table for his family." But these justifications don't help to increase my level of patience or tolerance. It's like something is mis-wired in my brain, but I know that I am not alone. I cannot be the only person who feels this way after a day of running errands. Let's be honest, it's exhausting.

My suggestion is to allot certain portions of each store for different types of people. For example, I can be in and out of a grocery store in 10 minutes. I know what I need, I know where it's located, and I always have my credit card out and ready to go. Other people like to wander aimlessly through the store. They stand in the middle of the aisles (searching for what, I don't know) without any consideration that other people may actually want to go down that aisle as well. They shop at their leisure, without a care in the world and, frankly, I can't stand it. Dawdle all you want, but please get out of my way because I have shit to do.

Now, I know that a lot of people think that I am the way that I am because I have a child. But this is not the case. I have been like this my entire life (although adding one more person to buy/do crap for has definitely not helped the situation). Nonetheless, this is not something that can or should be blamed on my sweet, innocent babe. This hot mess is all me, and I'm fully aware of it.

And believe me, I'm working on it.

1 comment:

  1. See, i discovered i am extremely patient, that only came after having the little guy. Now the tolerance thing.... ehhh not really working on that one, i get easily irritated, that is new for me. I have way more tolerance for P, not saying it's all that much, but few others get the pardon. Showstoppers, rude or mean people, and people that just don't care have zero room in my book. Maybe I should try and work on that, but why change me?? :-)

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