The impatience of the young is balance by the patience that comes with maturity, ironic that; one has more time when one has less time left. Older people can more accurately attribute the correct time horizons to things that need to be done. Younger people have a biological inability to think long-term. "We want the world and we want it... NOW!" bellowed Jim Morrison in The Doors' When The Music's Over. How right that sentiment felt when I first heard those words many decades ago. How foolish they sound now.
Yet patience can often be a mask for inaction. Procrastination. Putting off until tomorrow what you can do today. Is patience a euphemism for fatalism? "Mañana, mañana" never gets you anywhere. But is there something to be said for letting nature take its own course?
Patience - waiting for something rather than striving for immediate gratification - has its rewards when its considered; when awareness is applied to a situation, when options are thought through. Simply waiting in inactivity is not enough.
So where to put that slider - well, I for one would put it just slightly more towards 'patience' than 'impatience'; I wonder whether this is one that would be slid progressively towards the left as one gets older?
"We have all the time in the world," sang Louis Armstrong; two years later he was dead. Yet Hal David's lyrics, John Barry's music would not have sounded convincing sung by a younger vocalist.
This time last year:
Commuters' staging post
This time three years ago:
Return of the migrating geese
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