Practice of Patience

The word 'patience' has been a challenge where action is spot on.

I remember one of my childhood friends who lives on the other side of the world from where I am. She miscalculated the time zone conversion. I picked up the phone at 03.08 with my brain still asleep. She thought it’s 08.08 in the morning where I live. My eyes had difficulty opening as I waded through the wee hours on a self-imposed writing deadline, but the excitement of talking to her got the better of me since we haven’t heard from each other for a while.

At one point, our talk drifted to this word 'patience.'  A challenge for both of us, we admitted.

Career, relationships or the lack of it, family life, and future angst, they all require patience… and at times, add to these, loneliness and recurring grief, even when we think we have healed.


Life is simply that - full of ups and downs, a roller coaster, bumps and scrapes - emotionally, physically, and to some of us, include spiritually.

But in our search for harmony and peace, we have to keep reminding ourselves that we will never be able to escape life challenges.

We need patience. At times a lot.  I love what Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, and I quote,

"Only with winter-patience can we bring the deep desired, long-awaited spring."

 How is your patience today? Believe me, I'm trying to do something about mine.

I'm Lovable, You're Lovable

It's love wellness:  I'm lovable, you're lovable

Even if "falling in love" is acknowledged and attributed to the one who loves us, we should not fail to recognize or take for granted our own lovableness.

How we treat "falling in love" is important. Sometimes, it may even be a dis-ease. A careless or rush decision can cause a painful love sickness that may prevent the development of an enduring love or "opening to love."

As we grow up, we build walls around our hearts to protect our true feelings from fear of being hurt or rejected. What are these walls? We can easily identify some of them from experience – restrained actions, controlled feelings, numbed senses, cautious thoughts, timid glances, hypochondria, and if I may add, too much refined behaviors.


Then we meet someone "special." Suddenly, the wall protecting our tender heart begins to tumble down. We open up. We break our silence. To borrow a phrase from Camelot: "We flung wide our prison doors!" We enter then fall into the presence of love. Because this experience of falling in love is activated magically by another person, we attribute the source of love only to that person.

When we attribute that experience of our love only to the presence of the other person, there may be a tendency to overlook or recognize our own love-worth or lovableness. As we become dependent on another for our sense of worth we might overlook our own perceptions of ourselves and lose discovery of our own value, something that can only be measured by our own perception.

When we understand that the love we see reflected in another's acceptance is recognition of who we really are, we begin to accept that we are truly loved, and we feel lovable. As we listen to the ones we love with their deepest feelings and needs, they too will feel loved and be lovable.

Serenity to Accept Things We Cannot Change

Accepting Things We Cannot Change

Reflecting on a famous quotation by Reinhold Niebuhr:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

Some things just are. I’m talking about things we simply cannot change. If we spend days of our lives endlessly trying to change them, we only get frustrated, hurt and disillusioned.

We wish we have a big house and a happy home. We wish we have lots of money so we don’t need to worry about our piling up monthly bills to pay. We wish we have 10 booksellers to our credit. A lot more wishes...

Well, we just happen to be who we are.

We can only try to do the best we can. But when we sit around whingeing and whining about what we don’t have and compare ourselves with others, we find ourselves dragged on into an unhealthy and sometimes destructive mode.

Difficult as it may, we have to do something about it, then our circumstances may still cease to be burdens, with knowledge and acceptance that we have no power to change, rather, accept as facts of life we need to put up with.

Do we move on beyond anything we cannot change?