Last Thursday evening at about 8 p.m., I was returning home
from a simcha. I boarded the bus near the beginning of
the run, found a seat and settled in for a ride which I
expected to take about forty-five minutes.
At the next stop, a gentleman got on carrying a two-year-old,
holding onto the hand of a three-year-old and calling over
his shoulder for a four or five-year-old to follow him. He
sat down in the backward-facing part of a double seat, placed
the toddler on his lap and made sure that her pacifier was
firmly in place. Then he told the oldest of the other
children to sit near the window and squeezed the three-year-
old in between the two of them.
When we got to the shopping section of Geula, we hit heavy
traffic and the bus slowed down to a crawl. It took from a
quarter to nine until almost nine o'clock to travel four
blocks. I was looking down at my watch, fidgeting in my seat
and looking out the window for much of that time.
However, the young man with the family to look after sat
calmly talking to his seatmates, a big smile on his face. I,
the fidgety adult, considered it quite remarkable, because
this `gentleman' was not only young -- he couldn't have been
any older than six!
It reminded me of a trip we took to Eretz Yisroel to visit
family a couple of years before we moved here. We arrived at
the Los Angeles airport early, checked in and went to our
designated boarding area, where we sat, and sat and sat. One
delay after another was announced. We kept sending one of the
older children over to the flight agent to find out the
details as each delay was posted.
Finally, a middle-aged woman who was sitting near us calmly
reading, looked up from her book. "Are you going to Israel as
tourists or are you visiting family?" she asked. We replied
that we were planning to do both.
"Do you speak Hebrew?" was her next question. When I
indicated that I was not fortunate enough to speak Hebrew,
she continued, "Then I will teach you your first modern
Hebrew word: savlanut -- patience. Not only is there a
word for it, but we also have a gesture. You bunch your
fingers together, palm up, raise them to shoulder level, and
shake them briefly. That means, `Wait a minute.'"
Our new friend explained that she lived in Haifa, had a
married son in California and made the trip to see him and
his family once a year. She usually encountered delays at
L.A., but the same plane that was taking us to New York was
also continuing on to Tel Aviv. Therefore, we had nothing to
worry about.
We couldn't miss a connecting flight since the one we were
waiting for was the connection. We might as well relax, take
out something to read and use the time at the airport
productively. Her advice served us well on that flight and
others. From the time we started going back and forth from
L.A. to Israel until the airline we were then using went out
of business, we had more than our share of delays, but we
handled them more calmly.
For a few years in early adulthood, I lived in New York City.
The first time I walked uptown on Fifth Avenue in mid-
Manhattan, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon. Everyone stood at
the edge of the curb waiting for the light to turn green.
Then they all hurried across the street and raced up the
block, only to be faced by another red light at the very next
intersection. This went on, block after block. If one had
asked any of these pedestrians if they had ever managed to
make it to the next crossing when the light there turned
green, they would have told you, "Of course not. The lights
are set for the cars, not the pedestrians. It is impossible
to get to the next street before the light turns red
there."
However, even knowing that information quite well, New
Yorkers still play the `hurry up and wait' game. It must be
contagious, because by the time I had been living there for a
few months, I was doing the same thing.
New Yorkers at that time also had another ridiculous habit
born of lack of patience. Someone (including me, again, after
a short while) would descend the stairs to the subway
platform (two at a time, of course), rush over to the edge,
and lean over to look into the tunnel to see if the train was
coming! It is a miracle that none of us eager beavers fell
off the platform and onto the tracks. It must surely be proof
that Hashem looks after fools.
Although on an intellectual level, I realize that patience is
a virtue that I should work hard at cultivating, I still find
it difficult to put this into practice. That is why I was
truly in awe of the first grader who spent an hour-long bus
trip calmly attending to his younger siblings as his mother
stood in the back of the bus holding on to her baby's
carriage.
As I marveled at the patience of this young child, I decided
that my first self improvement project this year would be to
work on savlanut. These are some of the nuts-and-bolts
applications that I will be trying:
I will try to let people finish their whole sentence
before I butt in with my answer. I will also try not
to keep lifting the cover of each of the cooking pots to see
if things have come to a boil. I will try to tolerate waiting
in line at the post office, market, bank and other places,
even if other people cut ahead of me.
When I am walking down the street and an older person is
walking ahead of me, I will try to walk slower and not `pass'
the senior as if to say, "See, I can still walk fast and you
can't," which is quite painful. I will try to wait to clear
the fish plates only after everyone has finished that
course.
I will try to be more understanding if my bus does not come
on time, even if it is cold, rainy or both. I will try to
find excuses if the people I am supposed to be meeting on a
street corner in the city center do not arrive promptly. Most
likely their bus did not come on time.
I will try to be more gracious when people do not understand
what I am saying and I have to repeat myself, sometimes more
than once. Especially when I am speaking in my amateurish
Hebrew. In the same vein, I will try to remind myself that
there are cultural differences that sometimes come into play
when I am communicating with people from other countries.
There is a method to my madness. By undertaking this as my
self-improvement project, maybe Heaven will also have more
patience with me and grant me a good year in which to have
more time to patiently try out all my other self improvement
ideas.
