Padilla: Learning patience

WHEN someone tells me “Let us just WAIT” my mental riposte is “... FOR GODOT”.

“Waiting for Godot” is a Samuel Beckett play where the main characters, Vladimir and Estragon wait for their friend, Godot. Godot never comes. Repeat, NEVER comes. So, when I’m made to wait, I hope it is not for Godot because patience is not my virtue.

But what is patience? Supposedly it is the capacity to tolerate delay. Delays I can tolerate but for a reason. I have had flights delayed for hours, trips cancelled just before departure, activities sidelined for something else and these were okay. So I guess I am patient. However the universe has weird ways of teaching rather, testing thy virtue by sending two special persons in my life.

One is my logical bedrock of a friend based in Makati. Aspie diagnosis came early because of growing up abroad. As such coping mechanisms have been programmed to help this beautiful soul cope with stresses. But life can be cruel at times and when scripts fail and stimming is in the offing, my phone gets busy even at three o’clock in the morning. All I do is listen, peel layers of dissonance that could run for an hour or two--- think sunrise. This beautiful person’s mind runs in precise terms that when I commit to a 12:20 lunch or 8:30 dinner or 6:00 phone call, I could not be a second late. Once I was late for an 8:30 dinner that when I arrived at the hotel, we had to wait for 8:40 to have dinner because of that 10-minute interval. Where that ‘interval’ came from, ask Watson. But I am glad it was just 10 and not 50 minutes.

The recent one is my friend’s 12-year daughter who has developmental delays. Big boned and tall, one would think she’s already fifteen but close interaction with her would expose she doesn’t even think her age. She still cannot do simple math, understand abstract concepts, and forgets easily. I’ve recently spent a long weekend with her where I taught her how to cook corned beef. Believe me when I say that when it was her turn to peel and slice the onions, I sang three of Sting’s songs in my head and one Whitney Houston aloud. I had to crush and peel the garlic myself because I was about to do the full Yentl album and sinkholes happen when I do. If I made her peel potatoes I would have sang all of Sting’s hits for the last 25 years including Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for good measure.

That was when I began to ponder on what patience really meant. If patience meant stalling and waiting and inhibiting myself at the thought that the other was not moving fast enough, then I was not. But if patience means the power to hold tight until intuition tells me to make my move then I’m besotted with that intuition, that virtue just doesn’t test it often.