A Quote Challenge: Day 2

I was nominated by my great friend Brandewulf from Brandewijn Words for a challenge and we know that I love a challenge. I think my epitaph will say something about “she was sure she could” and then some humorous tale of my untimely demise where every unlikely event managed to take place (thank you Murphy, for your law and for making sure I always have a punchline in my day) and I will be looking down from heaven laughing because it was just so dang funny how things unfolded. Probably. Wulf knew even before yesterday’s post that whatever quotes I shared here would be excessively meaningful and profound for me. If you haven’t had the chance to check out his blog I highly suggest you do.

The challenge is to select and share 3 quotes on 3 consecutive days with explanations about why the quote is loved or how it speaks to the soul; obviously the nominator is thanked and 3 new nominations are made. Now onto the challenge!

Patience is also a form of action.

~Auguste Rodin

I have loved and held this quote for 13 years. Maybe it seems odd that I can tell you exactly how long I’ve held it but I remember so clearly where I was sitting when I first read this quote during a break at work. My worldview had been deeply challenged and I felt myself being drawn into a direction I had never planned on or even remotely considered. As a somewhat restless and impatient soul I have always struggled with the ability to wait thinking that surely there was something I could do to speed things along so that I could have what I wanted, to be able to hold and enjoy it as long as humanly possible, when I wanted it. Then I heard this quote and my world was shaken once more.

Patience is a verb?

Holding it is taking action?

Surely not!

And yet…

I will grant that it took me a solid 12 years to fully embrace this patience as action thing, but now that I have I find that I am able to do a great many more beautiful things for myself and for those whom I love from sitting in patience rather than pushing and striving. While others around me, those who love me, want to see me take steps in various directions with all due haste, I am content to wait in patience. Yes, yes, I know their advice is based on love and logic and it is sound; I know. Yet I also know that I see a pattern in my life looking back even over the last 12 months where the decisions I held in patience brought me to opportunities and experiences I could not have predicted or imagined but that were far more beneficial for myself and my future than had I jumped headlong through a closer door than the one I waited patiently to come.

I no longer feel like I am striving against the world and against time. I can wait for the right door to appear a the right time. If a door doesn’t open for me, it is not my door… So I will wait for another. If I run through the closest door, I may escape the situation I am in currently but that doesn’t mean I won’t just be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I don’t have a sense of urgency to force anything in my life any longer. Conversations that need to take place will in their time, and I will know their time by listening not by speaking. Relationships like flowers will bloom in their time but not before the bud is ready. Opportunities will arise when the time is right. I can go through my days without angst and worry. I can spend an afternoon rocking in a hammock or writing in a journal without guilt for not “doing more” because I know when the time is right to do those other things, I will know it. I only must wait for my door and listen to that still small voice that says, “This! This is the one we take!”

In so much as it depends upon me, I will live in faith knowing that everything will come to me when the time is right, when I am ready, and when the opportunity is golden and far better than I could have planned for, imagined, or achieved had I tried to force it with my own strength and in my own time.

Patience is also a form of action.

Now my nominations for today have a theme in that these are all photographers and I thought it would be interesting to hear the words that speak to the souls of those who capture beauty on film, although rather than asking them to do 3 separate posts I think it should be done in 1 so they can get back to taking beautiful pictures for the rest of us to be mesmerized by:

1. Bear is probably gonna beat me with a slipper when he finally meets me (and only he knows why) but I think it is worth it to nominate him if for no other reason than to shamelessly push you all to his gorgeous pictures of Cornwall, which you can also buy prints of buy the way… (see what I did there?). Soooooo I wonder if we will hear from Bear’s Photos or if he will laugh at my shamelessness in telling everyone they must go look because in my blog I make the rules and can do that without actually feeling shame.

2. The photographs taken and shared by Pique Images are a mixture of studio style work and photographs from everyday where things just somehow come together in a way deserving of a snap.

3. The pictures on Streets on Pointe are all ballet all the time. Of course I love that! But what I love even more is that the art of dance has met the art of photography. Nevertheless I am curious what makes this photographer think and tick.

P.S. I’ve been listening to the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies while writing. True story. My favorite of all those soundtracks yesterday was for The Fellowship of the Ring while today I remember how much I love the themes from the Rohan in the music inspired by the second 2 books of The Lord of the Rings which were published together under the title The Two Towers. Yeah… Simply iconic.