Patience

Whatever happened to patience? Is it me, or does it seem like no one chooses to embrace this quality nowadays? Road rage leaps at us from the daily headlines. Fast-food workers get verbally abused because a patron had to wait a little longer for that fresh batch of fries to come out of the fryer. The guy in the pick-up truck next to you at the red light is screaming at the top of his lungs at the timed, inanimate object that controls traffic flow, mindless of the fact that the traffic signal cares not a whit about his schedule. Patience. It is a commodity growing more scarce each day. Why is that? Some would say that it is a result of technology. We get instant news, instant social interaction and instant entertainment from that one object no one can do without: the cellular telephone. I won't go into the evolution of this piece of electronic wizardry, but it is a far cry from that bag phone I bought in 1994. Prior to that, I was on the cutting-edge of communication by virtue of the Motorola pager clipped to my belt, a device that evolved into models with which you could actually send text messages to someone equipped with a like device. For an additional price, you'd get news, weather and sports headlines and scores. All the while, the cellular phone was evolving, too. Then someone had the brilliant idea of merging the two devices. Cell phones now are an integral part of the lives of Americans; a Pew Research study, conducted in 2014, asserts that ninety per cent of U.S. citizens own a cell phone, with 64% of those being of the smart phone variety. In 1994, 24 million Americans subscribed to a cellular service. Today, right now, as you read this? Two hundred eleven million, a number which increases by the thousands daily. Nowadays, practically as soon as you walk out of the store with your brand-new smartphone...it is obsolete. That's OK with me. My two-year-old phone does what I need it to do. I'm content being a cave man with a dinosaur of a cell phone. I'm at the age where 'cutting-edge' only has to do with the steak knife I'm using, and 'new and improved' doesn't impress me as it did three decades ago. My truck, new in 2004, has 121,000 miles and crank-up windows...and I love it. It, too, does what I need it to do, which is get me from point A to point B with whatever gear or belongings I need at the moment. I don't need power-everything or heated seats or navigational aids, nor do I need a port for my wireless device so I can listen to my favorite music while I drive. AM/FM radio is fine with me. Patience. Want to see how much you have of it? Shut your phone off for a day, stay away from the computer and social networks. I shut down my Facebook account in December because I caught myself checking it repeatedly every half-hour...while I was in South Carolina visiting my 80-year-old mother. I was there to see her, not interact with friends and acquaintances who were six hundred miles away here in Ohio. Facebook was also proving to be a hindrance in the quest to complete a novel I've been working on...so my social media had to go. I did it without announcement or fanfare, no long goodbyes or explanation. It was extremely difficult at first; the closest thing I can equate it to was giving up cigars in 2014, after decades of indulgence. As time has passed, though, I miss both vices less each day. Why? Patience. Throw contentment in there, too. I don't have all I want but I have all I need. Sure, I'd like to have that beach house on Edisto Island, but I am content here at Ram Field Ranch...aside from winter, that is. As I've gotten older it seems that every snow/ice/cold season gets tougher to endure, although now, being retired, I no longer suffer those long, dark winter nights while in a police cruiser. Being warm and toasty in my bed alongside my bride is much more preferable. Maybe patience is a generational thing, something that comes with the passage of time. I'm quite certain that every generation, as they've gotten into twilight years, has wondered how the younger set would make it, would survive in the world which was passing by. I wonder myself, being a 'Baby-Boomer', how the Millenials will deal with life. Not nearly all of them, mind you, but quite a few...those who lack that special gift of patience. This new age of young people sometimes seems to be dominated by the 'everything now' and 'entitlement' mind set; what the Greatest Generation and Baby-Boomers worked decades for, some Millenials want immediately: big, new house, new cars, that $100,000-a-year job/lifestyle. Unless you win the lottery, it doesn't work that way. The extra things I've had throughout life I worked for, by taking on extra shifts; moonlighting as hotel security after finishing my shift at the police department or working off-duty security at high school sporting events. Sometimes, by taking on a part-time job. I clearly remember Dad working another part-time job on weekends while he labored during the week at General Motors, at a time before the big union contracts. He did what he had to do to provide for his family...a trait that was passed on to me. Patience. That was passed along, too