I’m not a fan of driving in Minneapolis/St. Paul - especially during rush hour. All those vehicles stopping, going, merging, dodging; seems to me like a good way to get into an accident! So when I realized I needed to make back-to-back trips to St. Paul this week I wasn’t overly excited. But I’m a strong, confident woman, right? Certainly I can handle this!
Day one of my consecutive trips I was feeling pretty great about everything as I traveled through St. Paul and back without the slightest inkling of rush hour. I questioned why I even thought that rush hour traffic could be a problem. It was smooth sailing; this was the kind of driving I liked! Then, about 10 minutes outside of the city, everything came to a screaching halt. As I crested a small hill I could see the four completely full, completely stopped, lanes of traffic as far as the eye could see.
This was not perfect.
So there I sat for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and then 60 minutes, without reaching a speed any higher than a crawl. Early on in the waiting game I figured traffic would start moving at any moment, but as I sat, and sat, and sat some more, I figured I better do something constructive with my time. Let’s see…I know! Practice the virtue of patience. Perfect!
That lasted exactly 6 minutes until the first tinge of needing a bathroom break hit. How could I be patient at a time like this?! My focus quickly shifted from practicing patience to practicing bladder control. But hey, this is a skill that could be just as handy though, right?
As the minutes ticked away at the ratio of what felt like about 3 minutes to every 1 actual minute I was getting close to the breaking point. What on Earth could be going on to stop traffic for this long?! I’ve got places to be people!
OK, so maybe it was time to try the patience thing again. But how can I just be OK with sitting here, wasting an hour of my time? And that’s when it hit me; As with anything in life, it’s not so much “being OK” with a stressful situation but more so our attitude towards it. Being OK with an extensive traffic jam was not coming easily to me that day, but changing my attitude towards it? That I could do.
I spent the rest of the hour-long delay mentally listing all the reasons why it was good that I was there at that moment. I thought of the more serious ones; how I was being held there in a safe spot so that whatever harm lay ahead could be cleared. And then of course I had to throw in some silly ones; this was giving me the opportunity to find out if it’s possible to get a tan through a car window.
And surprisingly enough it worked! No, not the tanning through a window part, the part about restoring my patience. The rest of the hour breezed by.
And thank goodness the second day’s trip to the city was not as eventful!
Becky,
Sister of Soul
Soulspiration of the Week:
"Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience." ~George-Louis de Buffon
Day one of my consecutive trips I was feeling pretty great about everything as I traveled through St. Paul and back without the slightest inkling of rush hour. I questioned why I even thought that rush hour traffic could be a problem. It was smooth sailing; this was the kind of driving I liked! Then, about 10 minutes outside of the city, everything came to a screaching halt. As I crested a small hill I could see the four completely full, completely stopped, lanes of traffic as far as the eye could see.
This was not perfect.
So there I sat for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and then 60 minutes, without reaching a speed any higher than a crawl. Early on in the waiting game I figured traffic would start moving at any moment, but as I sat, and sat, and sat some more, I figured I better do something constructive with my time. Let’s see…I know! Practice the virtue of patience. Perfect!
That lasted exactly 6 minutes until the first tinge of needing a bathroom break hit. How could I be patient at a time like this?! My focus quickly shifted from practicing patience to practicing bladder control. But hey, this is a skill that could be just as handy though, right?
As the minutes ticked away at the ratio of what felt like about 3 minutes to every 1 actual minute I was getting close to the breaking point. What on Earth could be going on to stop traffic for this long?! I’ve got places to be people!
OK, so maybe it was time to try the patience thing again. But how can I just be OK with sitting here, wasting an hour of my time? And that’s when it hit me; As with anything in life, it’s not so much “being OK” with a stressful situation but more so our attitude towards it. Being OK with an extensive traffic jam was not coming easily to me that day, but changing my attitude towards it? That I could do.
I spent the rest of the hour-long delay mentally listing all the reasons why it was good that I was there at that moment. I thought of the more serious ones; how I was being held there in a safe spot so that whatever harm lay ahead could be cleared. And then of course I had to throw in some silly ones; this was giving me the opportunity to find out if it’s possible to get a tan through a car window.
And surprisingly enough it worked! No, not the tanning through a window part, the part about restoring my patience. The rest of the hour breezed by.
And thank goodness the second day’s trip to the city was not as eventful!
Becky,
Sister of Soul
Soulspiration of the Week:
"Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience." ~George-Louis de Buffon
