I've just gotten home from day 5 of my two-week clinic. Students are playing hooky like flies, or something. I've been there all but 3 hours of the 40, and most folks have missed at least one entire day.
I've found this to be challenging and thought-provoking and fulfilling. I realize it might seem premature to say so, but given that I've embarked on a drastic mid-life career change, the fact that I've had no second thoughts--even after spending a week changing "briefs" and wrangling wheelchair footrests (no two are alike, good Lord)--seems significant. I find the ways I'm spending my time and using my brain and hands and health gratifying. I'm finding, so help me, negotiating the often conflicting expectations of different authority figures to constitute an interesting challenge and test of my social skills rather than an infuriating obstacle.
Every population I interact with I recognize to be disadvantaged, which unfortunately seems to be what my exercise of patience is predicated upon. The residents are mentally or physically impaired, dependent on others, aware of this, and are often depressed or peevish or aggressive as a result. The NACs are mostly immigrants, dealing with linguistic and cultural challenges, and thus also to be dealt with patiently. The RNs & LPNs that manage the floors, like the NACs, have over-large workloads, and simply cannot be everywhere and aware of everything at once. And I don't mean in these cases I'm gritting my teeth and exercising great forbearance.
I mean it's as easy for me to slow down and consider circumstances and some greater good and not get my hackles up as it is for me to do with my daughter, the first person with whom I think I have truly been patient in my life. Too bad I haven't figured out how to generalize this situational attribution to everyone, not just the "disadvantaged" according to whatever standard I clearly must be using. Would be nice if I could be patient with my husband, family, students, and friends in the same way. I'd be a lot less grouchy. A friend of mine once told me that relationships are all about managing expectations, and I see the truth of that statement more and more as time passes.
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Yay!! I am so happy for you.
ReplyDeleteI persist in the idealistic belief that practicing patience with the people who inspire it ultimately makes you better at it in general.
I have, unfortunately, made some detours where I am so focused on those whom I view as disadvantaged (and how hard I am working for them, and how much I am not sleeping for them) that I've been *less* patient with my friends and peers (whom I perceive as wildly advantaged). (Ahem...I think you may remember the worst spell of this.)
In further support of your conviction that this is a good road for you, though, I will point out that this grumpy-and-judgmental self came out when I was doing a lot of head-work (intellectual, administrative) on behalf of groups I perceive as disadvantaged, not direct service. When I do direct service, I think I am more patient. I even notice a difference between the days I manage the health outreach center for homeless people (set up, orient volunteers, make sure documentation/referrals/database entries/reports are done correctly, do patient intake) and the days I serve as a clinical volunteer (managed by someone else).
I think the trick to generalizing patience is to realize that everyone is disadvantaged, in some way. In the universal sense that we're all broken by sin, estranged from God and our neighbor, but each in specific ways, too, if you look for them.
Another trick is somehow holding in our hearts and brains that sense that everyone is an underdog without denying or stunting their potential for self-efficacy, creativity, love, kindness, and general Awesomeness.
I'm not there yet.
(I think that is one of the central paradoxes of Christianity, actually, up there with the triune God and the fully-human, fully-divine nature of Christ. We're all completely broken and in need of forgiveness, and yet created in the image of God.)