In Your Own Sweet Time

Patience…means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.

Sharon Salzberg

Some weeks ago, I took my then ten month old for his review at the GP. ‘We need you to get him to start practicing standing,’ the health visitor said. ‘We’re not concerned or anything, but his gross motor skills are below average,’ she continued. I asked why she was requesting I do this if there was nothing to be concerned about. She didn’t really have an answer.

I decided not to do the exercises she suggested. This was because I completely trusted that he would, in his own time, evolve to standing and eventually walking. Just as he had already organically shifted from supine, to rolling, to sitting, to all fours and crawling. I didn’t want to interfere with his process and rush him. If I did, what kind of life lesson would I be I teaching him? That it’s better to get somewhere faster. That one always needs to be improving oneself.

I hope he’ll have the capacity to rest back into and enjoy the moment he’s in, without always hungering for more. Of course there are times in life where there’s huge value in giving ourselves a push. But in a world that seems so focused on getting ahead and on constant self-improvement, we can all too easily forget to be present, and as a result miss out on the magic that is unfolding before us. Another shadow side of always trying to advance ourselves is, I feel, that it can exacerbate that sense of not being quite enough as we are in the here and now, something many of us struggle with.

Each one of is so unique, and we’ll develop in different ways as we move through our lives. That uniqueness is something to be celebrated. My son, for example, is the kind of child who will happily sit on the floor for ages studying the label on a cushion! Other friends’ children of the same age already tear around the room on two legs and find it hard to sit still. Both are beautiful expressions of their individuality. And yet a friend whose little boy who was already walking at ten months, was told that his verbal communication skills were below average. (As a side note, of course we’re lucky to have a health service that can pick up real problems and give us the support we need.)

I do question all the labelling and putting us into boxes that happens across all ages and areas of society. It seems somewhat constrictive, quashing the wild magnificence of this unique never-to-be-repeated being that each one of us is. And it gives rise to comparison, to thinking of ourselves as ‘better than’ or ‘worse than’ someone else, instead of delighting in us as us, and them as them.

I certainly grew up feeling not quite enough, and that others were always doing things better and getting it ‘right’. Even though my self-confidence has grown over the years, the habit of comparing myself to others remained pretty ingrained. I had a bit of a lightbulb moment in Regent’s Park a while back, when I saw how each one of its trees was so different to the next, yet they were all beautiful. Remembering this has helped me learn to rejoice in the unique gifts others have to offer - gifts which I can learn from, be nourished or inspired by – yet without feeling I need to be more like them.

My wish is that each one of us can learn to treasure both the moment we are in, and who we are in that moment. As Francis Bacon wrote, ‘We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake.’