78: Patience & Compassion
2/23/2014
Just finished the Making Friends fable today. Also wrote The Herald of Jukun three days ago, and The Gourd of Wisdom the day before that. I mailed them all out with my Dissolutions work to Uncle Paul tonight. I’m glad it’s all done and in the vault now.
Only, not quite yet.
The Making Friends fable for Chapter One: Alena turned out so well that it inspired me to go back and add more scenes to Chapter One. More scenes with Bakar, Tamal, Dougga, and maybe Alena. I’d like to show some antagonism between Diallo and the three boys to show how he didn’t have any real friends at that age. Guma’s appearance in Diallo’s life is meant to fill a void, which is reflected well in the Making Friends fable.
I came close to combining Chapter One: Alena with Chapter Two: Kumbella, and writing a whole new second chapter with Diallo chasing Alena, which would detail the whole Ghost Frog quest that results in him coming down with The Fever. All the things that I alluded to in Chapter Three: The Fever but left as a mystery. I seriously considered doing this because the first chapter is so weak it doesn’t really stand on its own the way the other chapters do.
But I decided not to because it would weaken the mystery of The Fever and would be an unwelcome burden for Kumbella to carry Alena when Kumbella does just fine on its own. Plus, coming up with a whole new chapter at this point would break my spirits, seeing how I believed I was almost done with the first half of the book.
Well, I’m still almost done. I just have to figure out what to do for the rest of Chapter One: Alena. And it has to be good in order to pick up the slack from the first half of the chapter.
Present-Day Reflection
8/11/2026
It’s odd to find myself now growing impatient with my younger self. Rereading these journal entries where I’m still so far behind where I am now – structurally speaking – and refusing to make the necessary shifts in direction to get to where I should be. In this entry I finally sense what needs to be done, but I don’t have the will power to commit to it. But then compassion kicks in, and my impatience dissolves as I forgive the younger version of me. He’s doing the best he can and will find his way in his own time.
Patience and Compassion are two muscles I find myself needing to exercise more and more in my life these days. Not just for me and my Batu work, but for strangers on the street and for the other people I’ve chosen to share my life with. Nobody lives up to my standards. Not me, not anybody. Especially, not anybody.
Watching people defecate in the street with no shame – the homeless who seem to have given up on life that I interact with every day as part of my day job. And even my friends and coworkers who don’t seem to care about anything or anybody but themselves. It’s all so demoralizing and frustrating. I lose my patience, get angry, and start becoming judgmental, wondering why it seems like I’m the only one who’s trying anymore.
Then it occurs to me that others may be wondering the same about me. That what I’m seeing when I look out onto the world is the end result of something beyond the people I’m judging. That they too may be doing the best they can, dealing with issues I have no inkling of. Things way worse than anything I’ve ever had to face. Just the possibility that this might be true is enough to give me pause and restore some of my patience and compassion. Not everybody is strong enough to carry the burdens of their life choices, let alone the things they didn’t choose that are forced upon them. I haven’t always been strong enough either. And I too have been judged for my weakness. Which has only made it easier for me to judge.
The problem isn’t in recognizing weakness and fault, it’s in blaming and becoming resentful because of it. The problem is the il will and anger that comes from it. Whether it’s directed at others or at myself. I work hard. I try hard to do well. I care, and I sacrifice a lot in order to get what truly matters to me. And all of this effort I put into living comes at the cost of feeling entitled to judge those who appear not to be trying at all. Especially after I’ve been judged harshly so many times.
This is when it matters most for me to overcome my emotional impulses – when I feel I have all the justifications in the world to judge and feel negatively about the way things are. If I can’t rise above the easy choice of giving up and letting my emotions dictate my perspectives, then how can I expect anyone else to?
Expectations have always been my emotional downfall.
So, looking back at the younger version of myself in this journal entry from 2014, I choose to exercise some compassion and patience for what he may be going through – whatever it is that may be blocking him from doing what needs to be done. Because, in truth, it was long enough ago that I no longer remember what all the burdens were that he was carrying. And it’s the awareness that I don’t really know what it is that I’m judging that allows me to stop doing it.
