It’s the Journey, Grasshopper

When it comes to the big things in life, I can be very patient.

If it’s a major project at work, I will diligently chip away at it until I’m successful. If I meet someone who isn’t particularly keen on me but it is someone I would like to get to know, I will slowly, over time, try to wear that person down and eventually win him or her over.

For important things, I’ve got all the time in the world. It’s the little things, however, that drive me meshuga.

Put me behind a stopped car at a traffic light with an inattentive driver who just sits there when the light turns green and I’m pounding my steering wheel and throwing my hands up in the air, screaming in my stopped car,“Move it, buddy!” (I’m much too passive aggressive, however, to actually honk my horn at the offender. I may be impatient, but I’m not rude.)

A line of people stretching out the door at the post office? Forget about it. I go off. Not at the postal employees, mind you. It’s not entirely their fault. It’s the cutbacks to public services that cause these delays that infuriate me. Still, I put myself through a lot of senseless drama just to mail a letter.

Besides Asia, where you are assured that every problem will be fixed in “ten minutes” because culturally no one wants to disappoint a tourist by telling the truth, there is no better place to practice patience than the African continent. Seemingly daily, I have to say to myself, “Relax. Take a deep breath.”

It’s not just at post offices in the U.S. where I lose patience. It happens in South Africa, too. At the Waterfront post office in Cape Town an employee tells me that they don’t sell stamps for letters, “only stamps for postcards.”

“Really?” I calmly respond to this absurd and incorrect statement. “I’m pretty sure you sell stamps for mailing letters as well. Would you mind checking, please?” I manage to say without my eyes bulging from their sockets and me pulling my hair out of my head.

It happens when I go to fill the car with gas at the Caltex station and the attendant spends five additional minutes trying to get every tenth of a rand into the already full gas tank. Despite my protestations, he continues to squeeze the handle of the pump until so little gas is emitted that it doesn’t even register on the meter. I want to say to him, “I will give you a larger tip if you will please, just put me out of my misery, and stop the agonizing process of topping off the tank!”

It happens at the central train station when I’m in line with dozens of other people to purchase tickets for the daily train to Johannesburg. It’s a daily train for God’s sake, there is nothing unusual about this, but only two ticket windows are open to help the travelers in the queue that grows longer, not shorter, the closer we get to the departure time. Exasperated, I want to throw a tantrum while waiting and exclaim that life doesn’t need to be like this. Then the wiser part of me takes control and says, “Slow down. What’s the rush? Got a train to catch?”

Well maybe the train example isn’t a good one because it does become a bit nerve-wracking when you’ve waited in line for 30 minutes to purchase your ticket and only five people have been helped and you can see that boarding has already begun for the train you are taking.

But here is the reality: my letters always get mailed, I’m never late for anything because a service station attendant took too much time filling my car (and I don’t run out of gas) and I have yet to miss a train. And, truth be told, these “delays” have resulted in interesting conversations and connections with people in unlikely places like post offices and gas and train stations. These daily “annoyances” are, I realize, the universe constantly having to hit me over the head and say, “It’s the journey, Grasshopper, not the destination.”