Best of Steve — Patience and Perspective

March 6, 2008, 4:30 pm; posted by
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Originally published October 25, 2007.

As a child, I had a fascination with maps and travel, probably — at least in part — because it was something I so rarely did. My brothers and I spent the vast majority of our youth at home, outside, exploring the fields and forests that surrounded us. For a flavor of the exotic, we called the different woody areas that separated the neighbors’ yard from our own “jungles,” and named them after faraway places. The Amazon. The Budapest.

When I did come inside, I sometimes pored over maps, mostly atlases of the United States, planning out extensive itineraries for journeys I knew my large family would never be able to take. Trips around the entire country, trips around the state, trips to particular destinations — for a time, I had a small bound collection of each, with estimated arrival times at every planned stop. I don’t recall thinking much about the purchase of gasoline, but those were the days it cost $1/gallon anyway. (Yes, the good old days… very soon, I’m going to start wearing my pants at chest-level and leaving my signal light on non-stop.)

I also watched the news frequently, and read the paper, and I knew, or thought I knew, how dangerous Washington, DC was. People, a lot of people, got murdered there. There were gangs and drugs and all manner of horrifying events. And so when my mother mentioned in passing that we might go there for a visit, I was very worried. Naturally I was interested in the trip and the destination, but it was so unsafe, wasn’t it? The murder capital of America! Well, we didn’t end up going for a few years; by that time I had reached age 11 and acquired enough perspective to view the trip with an almost total lack of fear.

Nothing really changed in that city in those few years — in fact, the crime statistics I just found show that DC murders practically doubled, from 225 in 1987 (36 per 100,000) to 443 in 1992 (75 per 100,000). But I changed. I became wiser, more capable of reason and risk calculation. After all, tourists visiting the Smithsonian on a sunny February afternoon are rarely murdered, and our trip wasn’t going to include any midnight trips down to Columbia Heights for an eightball. When I made those connections, the fear dissipated.

To me, the most valuable aspect of passing time — perhaps the only aspect of it I actually enjoy — is the improved perspective it brings. Third graders in a reading class were imposing and threatening to me at age 4. This is (usually) no longer the case. I distinctly remember dreading my tenth birthday for fear that double digits would mean the end of carefree childhood… but I think it was worth it in the end. And I have lived through and triumphed over events and challenges that were unthinkable — until they happened, and I adapted.

My biggest problem in life (correct me if I’m wrong) is getting upset about things that don’t matter at all, like losing my wireless connection or a point in a volleyball game. These are fundamentally problems of perspective, both temporal and eternal. After all, what is patience but a proper understanding of life and its ingredients? When I fume over forgetting my lunch, costing myself an extra ten minutes at the most, I am cowering in the face of third-graders all over again.

I don’t necessarily think the key to happiness is “living in the present.” It might be first realizing how little of the present will matter to the future, then focusing on precisely what means the most. Drive away the distractions. What have we to fear?


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