This fast-paced world is brimming with agitation, angst and impatience. These feelings literally rumble all around us, and I’m afraid we’ve become too accustomed to it. We sort of swim in shit soup on a daily basis and don’t even realize it. Why? Well because it’s warm, and oddly satisfies us…but it’s still Shit! Even when we notice that we’re swimming in shit soup we make excuses for why we haven’t jumped out of the bowl yet. “It’s such a steep climb out! I don’t have time to find a different kind of soup! I can’t leave this bowl…because my family is in here with me!” Ugh And so we swim and swim, and get sicker and sicker, and we wonder why we smell bad. Ok…that may have been a drastic analogy, but it’s drastic for necessary effect. Now don’t get me wrong! I do not profess to be a clean life-participant here…I am fully aware that my spiritual PPE (personal protective equipment) is still just out of it’s box. I’m still cleaning off the shit I swam in for years. Heck, I was shit soup president, life guard and CEO for as long as I can remember!…and that really STINKS! But I’m out! And I’m never going back.

We fill our days with so much stuff that we barely realize how out of control our lives are. Pedal to the metal! GO GO GO!…then we collapse at the end of the day. And sadly, it often takes getting sick from the soup to finally realize how out of control we are. When we are forced to take our foot off the gas, only then do we realize that the car still goes. How many experiences need to pass us by, before we realize that driving fast only makes memories a forgotten plume of dust in the rearview mirror. And furthermore, without patience and time, ‘love’ eventually becomes a four-letter-word that gets thrown around just as often as the other popular four-letter-words do.

When it comes to developing patience, we often avoid this sticky, heavy task, because well… we just don’t the have patience for it! But I dare to ask, have you ever noticed how often you work so hard for a negative outcome? Only to realize that if you took a moment to breathe along the way you may have been able to reroute yourself? And have you ever beaten yourself up because you didn’t even notice you were headed in the wrong direction because you didn’t take your foot off the gas? Just because the GPS in your car says turn left, doesn’t mean it’s right…I mean correct. If you slow down and patiently read the directions you may see that your gut tells you to turn an entirely different way. Maybe patience takes you off the beaten path…and it may get your car dirty. But I can guarantee it won’t be as dirty as if you crashed into a bowl of shit soup! 😉

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