Patience: A lesson learned
When one thinks back on their life, they will absolutely see all the little (and big) mistakes over the years. The coming of age, the “Oh crap” experiences, the pent-up stress. But all these failures, if you could even call them that, or experiences… led to something. They led to your instinctive training to be patient. Being patient is sometimes hard, especially for a person like me whose handwriting is affected by the overclocked thought process of running the operation. But as I like to say, the meaning of life is to simply not think about the meaning of life.
Patience really boils down to a few key points, the will to learn, the will to improve, and the will to fail. Because learning as well, boils down to a few points, the will to fail and alertness to improvement. Learning and patience when taken into their most essential pieces, are extremely similar. So by learning, you are naturally improving your patience tolerance. But I reflect on myself, at my academic grades, and see a trainwreck going from 3rd grade to 7th grade. I never learned a single thing I thought was useful. I was not a good student. But now, I have realized, to learn I first have to break this unhealthy cycle of “oh, I got a D, well I don’t care”. Over the past 2 years at a new school, I have learned to appreciate learning much more. Something clicked, and that something was patience. I have an unusually high patience level, but also a lot of room for pent-up anger and stress. My patience took me from learning nothing to everything. During the course of 2021, I began improving at a great pace. I started a 3D printing youtube channel, built a 3D printer, and built up my self-confidence. Back when I was getting D’s, my only source of happiness was my projects of which I can do whatever I thought was “cool”. These projects ranged from a cat laser toy to an AR headset. There really were no boundaries. But my grades still were a huge pain in the butt, I wanted to get rid of them, and I felt like a failure. I once fell down a spiral of nearly no self-worth, I never got a therapist or anyone like that. Instead, I pulled myself out. It got to the point where I was so desperate for an escape route, I wanted to do unthinkable things to escape. But this experience turned out good, it taught me the dangers of thinking at the edge, it taught me how to be a learner, how to improve. And most importantly, to be more confident. I needed to loosen up my standards and start genuinely learning something. So I did. Patience is something that really helped me attain that goal.
I have gotten way better at managing stress and my mental health. But sometimes I just break down from stress, it’s something that happened often over my “Dark Age” and still happens occasionally now. Instead of complaining, however, I simply continue. Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do, I learned that you don’t have to do the things that you hate, that is not required. Don’t stress yourself out trying to get an A in every god damned class, I hate getting straight A’s, it makes me feel like I hit the ceiling and I can’t be any better even though I can improve. Having a B doesn’t mean you’re a failure, you're not learning well, or you hate the class. No, getting a B is an opportunity to grow, a visible room to grow, and a way to boost your learning. I have fine-tuned my learning method from top to bottom, and I realized it doesn’t take much to start truly learning! I just needed a few lessons in my life to take me here. Patience and learning are built for each other, having the ability to be patient and really sit down and learn things is a huge benefit even when you feel you don’t know anything. Take my History class, for example, I used to hate the class in my old school, but here I threw out my old “don’t give a crap” attitude and tried to throw myself into the curriculum. This proved to be hugely beneficial, as I now absolutely adore history, it’s a great way to learn a lesson from past failures. Be patient, and make it fun.
So, patience, it’s a beautiful and helpful thing. Don’t make the same mistakes as I have, don’t go through what I went through. You have to realize who you want to be, who you want to project yourself as instead of constantly dreaming about vast fortunes. Don’t be stressed by grades, and always look at others’ failed methods, then pick them apart and learn. As my English teacher says: “Don’t be an idiot”
He sure ain’t wrong.
Thanks for reading this one, really something I wanted to get out there for a while now. Have fun reading some other cool stuff on my blog!
