patience

As I watch this pile of ashes, waiting for something to rise out of it besides smoke and soot, I am pondering the difference between patience and passivity. I mean, I don't mind waiting and sometimes even enjoy a good line. When you're waiting for something good, there's the anticipation to savor of course. It gets trickier when you're waiting for what may end up being nothing at all. But even in that there's a unique opportunity for observation--it's amazing what floats by you when you sit still in the water, resisting the tide. And you may also notice that the persistent forward march of waves--with the exhilarating, frightening weight of all that liquid--is an illusion of motion. It's just the same water in the same place undulating up, down, up, down.
If you're feeling sleepy, you can see how easy it is to slip into the slumber of passivity and how welcome and wonderful that bed sometimes feels. Or this is all just yawningly boring. In any case, I guess that's it--intention, awareness, mindfulness, whatever you want to call paying attention is the key to patience.

There's a side to patience that's all about stubbornness too, and I have a feeling that my own talents for waiting are rooted in that--because I am the gd world class champion of stubborn. Ask anyone. Especially my ex. It all makes me wonder if I have framed up the wrong question here, lecturing myself on the virtues of waiting, when the choice is not patience versus passivity, it's action, creation, and movement versus not.