Cultivating Patience and Perspective

Posted on March 21, 2013 by zoeweil

When I wrote Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times, I explored a number of virtues that people listed as the best qualities of human beings. The list I’d gathered was long, and I narrowed it down to ten. Fortunately, “patience” wasn’t in the top ten. I say fortunately because I wasn’t sure how I would write about a quality I possessed so little of.

I tend to be a rather reactive person, reacting quickly and sometimes fiercely to things, especially to injustice or cruelty. There are good aspects to this quality. I’m able to work passionately, speedily, and efficiently, to get a lot done, and often to get what I want (I mean that only in the best ways!). But sometimes, it’s not such a good quality. I can get angry too easily, lose perspective, and catastrophize. And because I don’t possess much patience, I too often fail to wait, compose myself, and respond wisely.

And so I surprised myself a few weeks ago when I was in Chicago. I’d flown there on a Friday afternoon with plans to fly home Sunday. I had rented a car, driven nearly two hours to Valparaiso University in Indiana, where I was keynoting a Peace and Justice Symposium and leading a workshop the next day. Following the symposium, I drove back to Chicago to perform my 1-woman show at Northwestern University.

Everything had gone beautifully, but it was an intense day, and after the show, as I was packing up my props, I realized that I didn’t have my wallet. I must have left it in the car, I thought, but when I got to the car it was nowhere to be found. My wallet had everything in it: my I.D., money, credit cards, even my cell phone.

Yet, I found myself remaining so calm.

Although it wasn’t in the building’s lost and found, nor anywhere in the room where I’d performed (at least as far as I could see), I still didn’t find myself reacting very strongly. It would be a pain to lose my wallet, that’s for sure, and I’d have to figure out a lot of things in order to get home the next day, but I knew it would all resolve itself. Then, just as I was about to leave the room and abandon the search, a group of students began reorganizing the space for the next event. When a guy moved the table I’d used on the stage area, there was my wallet underneath. What a relief.

There were a few other mishaps that night, including having trouble finding the hotel where I’d be staying, not having change for the automated toll both (necessitating getting info from the car rental company about the car to pay the toll online the next day), leaving my phone in the rental car, and waiting for quite a long time to be checked in at the hotel; but I didn’t have big reactions to any of these things either.

The next morning, as I waited for my first flight to Philadelphia, I received an email. My plane from Philly to Bangor had been cancelled. I would not be getting home that night. Oh well. No big reaction then, either.

What had happened to me? Where was the impatient, reactive Zoe?

Over the years, I’ve tried quite hard to cultivate patience, calm, serenity, and perspective. I travel too often – with too many travel mishaps, including frequent overnights in cities that were supposed to serve only for connecting flights – to keep reacting as if these mishaps are a big deal. I’ve learned that they are not catastrophes.

I remind myself, over and over and over again, about how very privileged I am; that I will have food to eat and a place to lay my head and I have nothing – NOTHING – to complain about in the big scheme of things.

And this is something I think that those of us with food to eat and a home and enough money to meet our needs must keep reminding ourselves. Patience and perspective are qualities worth cultivating. Fortunately, like most virtues, they will not only serve us but everyone whose lives we impact.

Serenely yours,

Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Joy and Wonder at the Detroit Airport

Posted on December 10, 2012 by zoeweil
Image courtesy random letters via Creative Commons.

I travel on average about a week each month for work, which means I spend a lot of time in airports. Travel has become more and more challenging and unpleasant (crowded planes and tighter seats, delays, hours spent on runways, meager food service even on long trips, etc.), but the airports themselves have become more and more pleasant and accommodating. LaGuardia has a huge salad bar with lots of options for vegans like me; chair massage spas are popping up all over; and free wifi and charging stations are expanding, making it possible to work during layovers and not have my computer run out of battery power.

It’s because of these changes that I don’t mind long layovers. They’re less stressful than short layovers, during which I’m too often running a mile through a terminal with my backpack on and my wheeled suitcase behind me saying, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” as I race to make a tight connection.

Recently, I had a long layover at the Detroit Airport, which is my favorite airport in the U.S. Why? Because of two artistic additions. In the atrium in the very middle of the airport there is a fountain that I could stare at for hours. The plumes of water are like dancers, beautifully and surprisingly choreographed. But it is the tunnel connecting Terminal A to Terminals B and C that often fills me with joy and wonder. Joy and wonder? In an airport?!

As one descends the long escalator to the tunnel, one is greeted by a music and light show. The translucent walls of the tunnel are designed to look like a cross between a seascape, a mountainscape, and a cloudscape, and behind the walls are ever-changing lights in a rainbow of colors. Choreographed to the music, the lights illuminate the walls and ceiling, undulating, moving, dancing. It is a gorgeous work of art.

So when I am not in a rush, I stand still on the moving walkway and just watch. And no matter how far I have traveled, how long or arduous the journey, or whether I have spent a night in an airport hotel because I’ve missed a connection somewhere, I always smile.

I’m aware that the tunnel may be using more electricity than if it were simply lit with fluorescent lights. I’m aware that such extra use of energy takes its toll; but I appreciate that the planners of this airport thought to bring art into our experience, and that this art makes a world of difference.

Yes, I experience joy and wonder in the Detroit airport. Imagine that.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

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Living Routes: The Power of Practical Education

Posted on October 29, 2010 by zoeweil

Last week I was a keynote speaker at the ESTIA Peace Conference and had the opportunity to hear another keynote by Daniel Greenberg, executive director of Living Routes, an organization that offers college students the opportunity to study abroad in eco-villages around the world. I loved this humane education opportunity – a chance to spend a semester immersed in how to live, experiencing what we might consider typical “subjects” through real life: practice rather than just theory.

In the same way that I hope to see overarching topics such as food and water, housing and structures, energy and transportation, protection and conflict resolution, products and commerce, become the lens through which we learn math, science, language arts, social studies, history, and so on, in high school, I imagined the power of a semester spent at an intentional eco-village offering students the opportunity to experience sociology, conflict resolution, economics, politics, engineering, architecture, and so many other “subjects” first hand.

Check out Living Routes.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

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Update on Complaining and Gratitude

Posted on February 10, 2010 by zoeweil

In my blog post, Ever-growing Expectations and the Roots of Complaint, I wrote this:

“Later this month I’ll be flying to Vancouver, B.C., for work. I’m planning to… reflect upon what I’ve received from the airline, airport, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and all the personnel and inventors and engineers who will have made my flights possible. If something goes wrong and I miss one of my two connecting flights or wind up spending hours in an airport due to inclement weather or experience some other hassle, I hope that I will be able to maintain my resolve not to complain and instead find ways to still marvel, be grateful, and give something back.”

Well, I wanted to write a post about how I did.

First, it wasn’t very hard to keep this commitment, initially, because despite the fact that I left Maine in a snowstorm, every flight ran on time, and I even had a whole row to myself between New York and Salt Lake City. I tried to contain my inner complainer a bit when the woman in the seat on the other side of the aisle was coughing the whole time, but since I was able to move to the window and create some distance I did fine keeping the complainer at bay. (I would add, though, that now I have a cough myself and need to fly to New York City on Friday, where I will likely annoy someone else if I’m still coughing — I promise to keep a lozenge in my mouth the entire time if necessary!)

The flights back home were equally uneventful. I was grateful. Especially in the Detroit Airport, which has the coolest light and music show that accompanies the moving walkway between Gates A and C and which always makes me smile.

I arrived in Bangor at 1 a.m. After digging out my car, I began my 45-minute drive home in freezing rain. The roads were bad, but not horribly so, so I went slowly and expected the drive would just take longer than usual. But by the time I reached the town of Dedham, the road had become a sheet of ice.

Before I go on, I should say that this particular stretch of road between Dedham and Ellsworth comes with bad memories. On our trip to the area to find a place to live shortly before we moved here, I ran out of gas on this stretch of road. On another late night drive home from the airport, my car lights failed, which was quite harrowing. A friend’s son says that this section of road is haunted, and even though I wouldn’t go that far, it’s a hilly, dark, and lonesome road through the mountains at night. And I should also say that shortly after moving to Maine, I skidded off a road (not this one) on black ice and over a 10 foot embankment, totaling my car, and so I’m particularly scared of icy roads.

I came to the one light on the stretch of road where there’s a gas station. I considered holing up in my car until morning rather than trying to go further, but the thought of such a cold night in the car without appropriate clothing chilled me, literally. So I climbed the hill past the gas station and realized my car was having trouble gaining any traction on the ice. At the crest of the hill was the Dedham School. I pulled in to call my husband. He offered to come get me, thinking I was probably overreacting because of my history on icy roads, but I told him no in no uncertain terms!

My hope lay ahead one more mile. At the very top of a bigger hill, nestled in the mountains and overlooking a beautiful Maine lake, lay the Lucerne Inn. I had no idea if they were open, and I knew I could go no further after that because the road precipitously descends beyond the inn, but I decided it was worth it to try to make it there.

I did!

I almost wiped out as I got out of the car because the parking lot was a sheet of ice as well (of course it was!), but I caught myself. Then I was provided with a warm room with a comfy bed. I was so profoundly grateful. Grateful the inn was open and that someone heard me knock at 1:45 in the morning. Grateful I could afford a night’s stay at a lovely inn. Grateful that Ihadn’t had to spend a cold night sitting in my car waiting for the roads to be safe.

So, I guess one could say that I succeeded in my goal not to complain when something went awry on the trip.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

Image courtesy of Morten Rand-Hendriksen via Creative Commons.

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