Jennifer Silverman, The Curious Columnist
Although I’ve known many an impatient character in my life, I’ve never considered myself a member of the lacking-patience club. Don’t get me wrong, like everyone, I have my moments. Overall though, very few experiences truly try my patience – until recently that is.
I’m not sure why the whole “patience is a virtue thing” is suddenly such a tall order for me, but alas, I’m noticing a trend. As you may recall from previous columns, I recently launched my blog, which was many moons in the making. A few days in, I began to experience a near-constant urge to scrutinize the analytics, as though doing so would satisfy an insatiable craving.
As it turns out, “publishing” a website doesn’t render it instantly searchable on Google, which is how the bulk of readers come by content. It can take weeks for the diligent little Google bots to discover each individual page on a website, crawl the pages to determine searchable information and then index the information so the page becomes searchable. There are apparently no methods of fast-tracking the Google indexing process. It simply takes time and requires patience.
Also on the blog front, last week, my website inexplicably developed a strange design fluke in which some of the images were rendered unviewable. Vibrant photos were replaced with unattractive, boring, gray boxes. It took the techy powers that be several days to get to the bottom of the issue and return the pretty pictures to their rightful positions. (So, more time and more patience from moi.)
Then, my beloved canine sidekick, Petunia, unexpectedly became “sick as a dog” with a mysterious malady that required fluids, X-rays and medications. I was, of course, a nervous wreck, anxiously waiting for Petunia to return to her active, squirrel-chasing self. I earnestly thank my lucky stars, and the exceptional folks at Fernandina Beach Animal Clinic, for her full recovery.
As I’m sure is commonplace when our loved ones are ill, each minute Petunia was suffering was interminable. During her recovery, “patience” was no longer a word in my vocabulary. Of course, unlike Petunia’s illness, my blog issues are of little consequence in either the small or big picture.
Nonetheless, I began to assume impatience had slithered into my psyche and abruptly become my jam. My first instinct was to immediately face the problem head-on, consulting my library of self-help books and locating an Oprah podcast about impatience pronto. Then it occurred to me - perhaps impatience was not truly my obstacle. Maybe all these occurrences were lessons in releasing control, which apparently is posing quite a challenge for me of late.
What dawned on me was that regardless of how popular my blog does or does not become, other than content, design and promotion, for the most part, everything else is out of my control. And odds are, if the blog does continue to grow and someday prosper, I will eventually maintain less and less control. Similarly, well-being and health are only controllable up to a certain point. We take good care, take preventative measures and take assistance with open arms, but then all we can do is follow instructions and wait.
I tend to believe that life events are teachers that appear at the perfect moment to school us. I don’t know why the lessons that I cannot control everything and that impatience accomplishes nothing have materialized now, and that’s OK.
What I do know is that embracing life’s lessons prepares us for what’s next, whatever that may be. So, instead of becoming an impatient control freak, I’ve decided to just be grateful and to keep learning. After all, attempting to grasp control serves no one. Conversely, attempting to surrender control, and instead focus on the positive intention behind it, has the potential to serve everyone.
Jennifer Silverman, the Curious Columnist, has served as a celebrity wardrobe stylist for hundreds of TV personalities and professional athletes. A few of her favorite projects include the Olympic Games, the Oscars and Inside Edition. Silverman and her Westie, Petunia, relocated from Manhattan to Amelia Island in 2019. Silverman may be reached at fashionmousenyc@gmail.com.