This young fellow was driving this...well, it's a MOTORCYCLE....up and down Panther Creek Court (no panthers, no creek, no court) the other day, and I couldn't help but snap a picture of it. It's so TINY, it's hard to believe that the wheels generate enough gyroscopic momentum to keep the darn thing upright - especially since having a boy this size on the seat would make it so top-heavy.

And I'm pretty sure that the boy wasn't 14 years old, which is (I believe) the minimum age for a motorcycle license (now, there's a question - since motorcycles are certainly more dangerous for the rider than cars, why would we let younger people drive them? Isn't that sort of backwards? I got my first motorcycle when I was 26 years old, and I don't think that I was old enough then. In fact, I'm not sure that I'm old enough now) -- at any rate, I don't think that this young'un is licensed for a motorcycle, although perhaps there is some minimum horsepower or weight necessary before the vehicle is classed as a "motorcycle" instead of a toy.

Silas is now well over sixteen years of age; he could have his permit if he would only fill out the paperwork and study for the test. But for some reason he doesn't have any real desire to do so; it might be that he doesn't really believe that anything that doesn't happen right now will never really happen; this reminds me of those cereal-box offers when I was a kid. It might be some sort of toy that I really wanted, but it would say "Please allow four to six weeks for delivery", so I would never bother sending in the boxtops. Four to six weeks? I'd be grown up by then!

Now I'm the antithesis of that impatient youth; nowadays, I don't want ANYTHING right now, because I don't have time for it anyway. I don't want to go see movies at the theater because "I can't wait until they come out on DVD" - I'd much rather wait until they come out on DVD, and I generally wait until I can buy them on the discount rack for the (at least close to) the same price that I can rent them as "new releases".

I don't want the newest technology; I usually wait until something has been proven out (not only that - I wait until it's proven, accepted, and cheaper). I don't listen to new music - it took me almost 20 years to decide to give R.E.M a listen (I wanted to make sure that they weren't just a flash in the pan). I am certainly not hip with the latest fashions - in fact, most things are out of style before I even knew that they existed.

So in many ways I have lost that impatience of youth - and for that I am truly grateful. But having lost that particular sort of impatience does not (alas) mean that I am "patient".

I love the Japanese definition of their term which translates as our word "patience" (I got this from Shogun) - it means "not to let one's emotions dictate one's actions". In many ways, my emotions still dictate my actions - and those situations are always times when I am reacting quickly,rather than slowly, to a situation. Thus I find that this is a good working definition of "patience" for me.

I still have some areas of my life where my lack of patience is crippling. The first - and most grievous - instance of this defect is my relationship with my youngest son, Silas. There is no other person or institution or principle to which I react with as much negative emotion as I do to that poor, sweet boy. The cause is simple, yet (so far) insuperable - I see in him those character defects which (to my way of thinking) have been the biggest contributors to my downfalls and failures.

Since he is so dear to me, and since I feel so very, very responsible for him (my other two boys grew up in their mother's home, with their stepfather - he's a good man, and I am aware that I had little to do with their molding and maturing) I react immediately with vigor and irritation anytime I think that he is being lazy or unconscious or inattentive or not paying attention to how continuing along the path he has chosen will cause him to wind up as a bald-headed old failure with nothing to show for his life but a mess of pottage (I'll bet that that sounds like "projection", right? : )

I also find myself reacting poorly when I am tired. Now, this might seem to a normal type of person that I should, therefore, try to avoid being tired - but let's get honest, shall we? Sure, I'm reacting worse when I'm tired, but that's because I'm not as ready to expend the energy necessary to behave; obviously, the problem is there anyway. It just shows up when I'm more tired. (This may be why some in AA say "don't get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired", while our Big Book never says any such thing; some folks are disposed to treating successful avoidance the same as a solution). So I need to treat those occasions when I lose my temper due to fatigue as learning opportunities - because the holler was always in there; it just came out because I was too tired to hold it in. So I'd best find out what's bothering me.

Our Big Book says that we're supposed to ask that we be taught the way of "patience, tolerance, kindliness and love". I think I need to get with the program in that respect.