How Automatic Doors Teach Me Patience

Sometimes I approach a pair of automatic doors more quickly than they are opening. No, not sometimes, every time. I am never not in a hurry to get to the other side of those glass doors. This frequently results in stubbed toes or (because it’s me after all) nearly smashed front teeth. It’s embarrassing. As I stand there wiggling against time and closed doors, I check my peripherals and worry that people think I am Windexing the glass with my tee-shirt or reading taped-on advertisements up close; but neither of these is true. And at that last motorized moment when the gap is finally widening enough for me to slip through, I always get really irritated, panicky like a race horse, like it’s taking a full decade for the doors to fully open. Then I bolt through as if I am fleeing a fire or a skunk or maybe the librarian who knows my books are past due.

Something has to change.

Either the people in charge of designing and maintaining automatic doors need to invent some kind of a sensor that tells the doors to open at a speed conducive to the speed of the approaching traverser… Or… I need to slow down a bit.

Experience tells me this is my problem to solve, not the mysterious Automatic Sliding Door People.

I simply need to ease up and slow down. My stride needs to be gentler, less urgent. More patient.

We have heard since childhood that the best things in life are free and that good things are worth waiting for. These sentiments are so true! But they sort of fly in the face of busy adulthood, multitasking, and thrill chasing. In recent months Handsome and I have learned to take life one single day at a time, often one hour at a time. We have been forced to learn how to accept the good, loving, bright days for the wonderful gifts that they are and really soak them up in our bones. This can only be done at a slow pace, really. This can only be accomplished by pausing to notice details and breathing deep, cleansing breaths. Some days this requires more discipline than others, but the payoff is always amazing. And then we are always better nourished for the darker, more challenging days that inevitably follow.

Ann Voskamp and C.S. Lewis both liken this phenomenon to Einstein’s theory of relativity, though I am so sorry I cannot provide the right quotes. Just please set aside time to read Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. It is heart-transforming! Perhaps it would be a perfect read for Lent if you observe that season. I think Edie wrote about it this past winter, too. The idea is so simple: the more your focus on the present moment and deliberately slow yourself, the more slowly time passes. Conversely, the more rushing about you do, especially when it is not absolutely necessary, the more harried you and your life become. And the more quickly your time passes. All of this and accomplishment are not necessarily bedfellows.

Patience.

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgement and effort to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur. ~Ann Voskamp

I have learned a lot these past months, but I still have so far to go. I still crave so much more stillness of spirit and personal power to carve out and build the life I imagine for myself and my loved ones. So much is available! So much noise is ready to be cut out and muffled. So much truth is ready to be unearthed.

So this means I will be walking through more doors in coming weeks and months. If they are automatic sliding doors, I plan to approach them more slowly. More safely and with greater patience.

Happy life-lesson-learning, friends! Protect your front teeth.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.

A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh 

XOXOXOXO