The Virtue of Patience

When I fire up the computer every morning, I like to check out Twitter to see what is trending. This morning, there was yet another clip, trending hard, related to the Kardashian clan. I’m ashamed to say that I instantly put on my cynical, snarky hat right away, as I pressed play on yet another LOOK AT ME “Hollywood brat” video. This video was depicting, the young mother, Kylie Jenner teaching her little toddler, Stormi, about patience. She left a giant bowl of candy (they kind of look like designer M&Ms), right in front of the little girl, and then Kylie, the gorgeous, young billionaire mom, said that she had to go to the bathroom. (For those of you who don’t know, Stormi’s parents are Kylie Jenner, a 20-something make-up mogul billionaire (yes-billionaire), and her father is Travis Scott, a rap music megastar.) When Kylie got back from going to the bathroom, she told Stormi that she could have three pieces, out of the giant bowl of candy, sitting right in front of her. But, she had to wait for her mother to return. Stormi nodded, showing that she understood the directions from her mother. Kylie then leaves little Stormi, in her adorable outfit, on a beautiful designer couch the size of California, seated right in front of a giant bowl, of designer, color-coordinated M&Ms. The audience watches the little girl hemming and hawing and keeping a good, constant eye on the bowl of candy. At one moment, Stormi wraps her arms around the bowl, as if to hug it, or perhaps to just dive into it, like our dog Ralphie does, with his food bowl, every night when he is fed, but the teeny, tiny, adorable toddler stops herself from her own impulse. Instead, she sits back on the couch, and starts singing to herself, a sweet little song about patience. When her mother returns, she claps excitedly about finally getting to eat three little pieces. The two-year-old little girl did better than I would have done, even now, and she is only two! I personally would have done the Ralphie dive right into the candy bowl, probably from the get-go and I certainly wouldn’t have stopped at three pieces.

Some things stick with you your whole life. This video on patience reminded me of one of those things. When I was just a young kid, a friend of mine taught me a little song which she had learned at Vacation Bible School and it stuck with me. I never forgot it. I sang the song to my children (despite the eyerolls) when they were little ones. It goes like this:

“Be patient! Be patient, for God is patient, too! And think of all the times that God has had to wait for you!”

It struck me that little children and little songs have a lot to teach all of us. We are all going through an enormous lesson in patience with this coronavirus nightmare. We can do it. We can weather through this storm. As a darling little two-year-old shows us, patience, as hard as it is, has already been programmed into us. We have the ability to be patient, even if we have to remind ourselves, with simple, little, catchy tunes. Sometimes we just have to be reminded of the fact, that we are able to remain patient, in the simplest and in the most heartwarming of ways.