Patience.

Patience is a virtue. Good things come to those who wait. Stop and smell the roses. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet. With love and patience, nothing is impossible. Have patience, all things are difficult before they become easy. Patience is not the ability to wait but how you act while you are waiting. Blah blah blah, whatever. Patience is definitely not one of my virtues.

We all have parts of ourselves we need to work on, and I can openly admit that this is one of mine. It was brought to my attention by my friend a few weeks ago (and definitely not for the first time) as I was repeatedly pestering him for a favour, that my patience ‘skills’ are something I need to work on. In annoyance with my pestering, my friend snapped at me, “Meghan, your next blog topic is patience. Write it and then take your own advice!”

I am aware that my patience hasn’t developed much since I was a little kid. I may be better at hiding it now, but the frustration it causes me internally still feels exactly like it did when I was 5-years old. I am a very passionate person and when I want something, I want it, and I don’t hold back. I can’t hold back. Well, I can, but it feels like it’s particularly harder for me than it is for most of my friends. It’s almost a disorder for me. I’m extremely goal oriented and when I realise something I want, I become so determined to have it that I want to skip all of the important and necessary steps involved in getting it and just get to the finish line immediately. Routine also brings this out in me – it breaks my spirit. I get bored, and then once again, I become incredibly restless. It makes me feel like I’m literally going to crawl out of my skin.

When this restlessness hits, I need action and movement, fast. I need a solution. I am a person of action, a problem solver. I cannot stand it when people sit around and complain about things endlessly. Shut the fuck up and find a solution. This attitude is how I landed myself into my current role as an Events Manager. I thrive on change, am incredibly adaptable and resourceful, and I’m particularly good at finding quick solutions to problems.

Next week though, I will have been in my current job role for 6 months. Thus far in my life, this has generally been my threshold with most jobs before the restlessness starts to kick in. The last few weeks I’ve really started to feel it stirring inside of me and it’s impossible to ignore. Going to and from work every day is starting to feel like Groundhog’s Day. Routine is the bane of my existence.

I’ve had an energy and enthusiasm that drives me forward at full speed ever since I was young. I remember so many times growing up, hearing my dad say, “calm down”, “slow down”, and “Meghan walks to the beat of her own drum.” It used to really infuriate me. When my friends were all focusing on their exams and studying to get into university, I was looking at a map of the world and trying to figure out which country I should explore when we finally finished school. The entire notion of university after what had already been the better part of 15 years of education felt like a prison sentence to me. I needed to be free to run wild, not chained to one location.

When I feel this restlessness, my solution has always been to change my environment, as though this will somehow cure the stirring inside of me. And it usually does, for a time, but it never goes away completely and it always comes back. I really struggle when problems present themselves to me that I don’t have an immediate solution for.

Should I quit my job? Move to another country? Throw a few things into a bag and just head to the nearest airport. 1-way ticket to anywhere, please. Move to Australia? Maybe Mexico? Uganda? Never been to New Zealand…why not? I’ve done it before, it won’t be hard to do it again. It’s like I’m always looking for a new home base that will be ‘the one’.

I read an article recently in the Telegraph titled the Wanderlust Gene that a friend tagged me in on facebook. She tagged me, “this is sooo you”. After reading the article I googled the concept and found many more articles describing this affliction I can’t seem to shake. Other articles referred to it as the ‘Nomad Gene’. National Geographic calls it ‘The Restless Gene’ and explains that those afflicted by it are particularly bad at coping with routine and are far more likely to live nomadic lives and go on crazy adventures. If indeed this is a real thing, then I definitely have it.

Consequently, and probably unfortunately for me, this is also something I’m very attracted to – which has led to some pretty difficult dating scenarios for me over the years. Perhaps it’s also because I just don’t see any distance as an obstacle. The world is my oyster and I’d go to just about any far corner of the earth quite happily. I guess that means that, in essence, I’m attracted to my own restless soul – which I haven’t decided yet if that’s a good thing or not.

With this restless feeling once again reawakening in me, I’m consciously trying to take a moment to enjoy the little things in my life so I don’t do anything too reckless (just yet). I’ve managed to stay in the UK for 3 years this time around – I haven’t spent more than 1 year in any place since I finished high school at 17, so I know I need to appreciate that. England is more of a home to me than anywhere else, though I’ve always struggled with that concept.

I know now as an ‘adult’ that my happiness needs to come from inside of me and to have gratitude for what surrounds me. Slow down. Appreciate the present. Focus on what I have and enjoy the now instead of focusing so hard on the future and whatever thing or goal it is I want that’s dangling just out of arm’s reach for me and making me insane. I am exactly where I’m supposed to be (even when it really doesn’t feel like that). I need to understand that. I am enough.

I have a hard time keeping still, but I’m trying really hard to learn to appreciate the present instead of always longing for the future. Now is good too. My friend and coach, the beautiful Gina Swire, really struck a chord with me last week when she said, “Can you imagine how overwhelming it would be if we got everything we wished for right away? It would be absolute chaos!” I had to think about that at first – like why can’t I have a villa in the Mediterranean, a beautiful home base in the UK, spend a month each year teaching yoga retreats in Costa Rica, be an international best-selling novelist and have an amazing relationship that somehow fits into to it all, right now?!?! Gina was right. If I woke up tomorrow with all of those things it would be quite a shock – and I’d probably take a lot of it for granted if it came to me that easily. The world would be completely crazy if we all got what we wanted right away.

Divine timing is what Gina called it and she said I have to learn to respect it and know that we are given what we ask for, but always in divine timing. And sometimes, the wait is to see if we actually really want what we think we want. Time is the only way to tell.

If a few months go by after you’ve wished for something, and you still really want that thing, then that’s how you know it’s something you truly desire. You have to endure the wait and the struggle to appreciate the good stuff when it comes along. Believe me, I am thankful to know this by this stage in my life. If I didn’t realise that by now then I would literally be on a 1-way flight to the rainforest right now, and I’d throw away all of the good things I have worked and waited for that currently surround me.

I’m so grateful for all of the 1-way flight’s I’ve had in my life, for all of my crazy adventures and wild experiences. but I also know and have experienced the loneliness that can come with them and the longing for a real home (next week’s post). There’s a certain isolation that comes with trying to get people to understand why I’ve dropped everything and just packed my bags and moved to another continent so many times. But I have, and far too many times to count. I’ve lived across 5 different continents and now my heart and my friends are spread all around the world.

It has been a crazy journey and I wouldn’t change any of it. But now with patience and experience, I must somehow attempt to responsibly handle my restlessness, as an ‘adult’. With fewer tantrums and less recklessness than in my 20’s, but also with a recognition and understanding that the restless part of myself needs to be acknowledged and still included in my life – it is a big part of what makes me ‘me’. It’s not something I can just turn off or ignore. So slowly now, and with patience, I will continue to seek the winning formula for me to balance these two opposing parts of my soul – my ongoing yearning to find and settle into my ‘home’, with my gypsy soul yearnings to run wild and free…