So it’s been a few days—my intent was not to make you wait patiently—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll get to why I haven’t written in a couple days in a few paragraphs...but for now let’s go back to as Paul Harvey. Would have said “the rest of the story.”
It was a dark and snowy night and I had walked wearily out of the computer lab carrying a box of key punched cards complete with a black. Felt tip pen that had been used to put identification on the nearly 300 cards in the stack. I had looked up to see another student and didn’t. See the ice and didn’t miss it either. As I fell the box satisfied the laws of Newtonian physics and travelled with equal and opposite force into the cold dark sky. Then following another popular law of. Physics the cards which were heavier than the box. Flipped the box and started to obey gravity and. Move toward earth Some cards were over Cheever’s and led the way to the ground managing to break the rubber band that had loosely bound the deck and then onc cue right before the cards hit ice the wind gave an extra 30 mph gust and what. Had been theoretically cards containing code magically transformed themselves into paper airplanes. All in all 43 cards were. Not stapled but the were bent, folded, wet, and otherwise mutilated. A few cards were missing in action and those would need to be replaced completely. All told the next morning I dragged my box across campus in the morning and due to impatience started typing and punching out some new cards. I made a mistake or two and all of the sudden I realized that I didn’t have enough blank cards left to finish. I sat. There for a few minutes in defeat wondering if this was really my dream or was it a nightmare career choice? Well..I finished what I could and went to the bookstore (the home of special pricing_ and bought a blank stack of 50 cards and finished the assignment. I turned in the cards and looked up the “running order list” to see when I could come back to pick up the print out—the results and it was only a mere 22 hours and 38 minutes later when the help desk window worker put my “job” in the “outbox cubical. There it was—my calendar program had worked! I had my calendar for the year 2000 with the months arranged in alphabetical order...didn’t everyone need one of those? Everything was perfect except.... well the first line of the printout that proudly displayed my name—my name misspelled that is. I guess if I still needed a sign that this computer major wasn’t for me my own name being a mistake was. The spiritual equivalent. Of having the lamb of God skywriting “it’s not for you kind” in the frigid January sky. enough said... I decided to shift my academic focus that day but to what I didn’t know. Do I regret that choice? No not really excepts here’s a the rest of the rest of the story. No more than 18 months later was attending another college and taking a computer programming class because on that campus they had just installed 6 CRT terminals and students could use 1 of those. No more cards no more boxes that could fall over...no more waiting to see if your job would run. If only I had been just a little. More patient, maybe I would have invented google or maybe even been in on the ground floor of internet porn. But alas, I had would up moving toward communications and that hooked me up with the college radio station and perhaps the finest collection of music lovers to grace the northern hemisphere..
so traveling. Back... I started telling this story to show how not being patient could change one’s life in a most anticipated way and that a reason for impatience can turn into folly.
In the end I learned a valuable lesson from this impatience. The road to peace and joy is probably a journey that feels a little like waltzing a tight rope between persistence. And acceptance being ever so gently nudged by a constant breeze of change.
To sum up (Okay tomorrow I’m going to give you a summary rhyme for this whole thing) we(and in I) get impatient —longing to experience my future self now—but this assumes way too much control over my universe. In seeking peace and joy it may be better to slow down and really experience what is.going on right now and breathing a little deeper now and then. Take a minute to. Think of the times when not getting what you wanted led to getting what you needed (everyone can use a little. Rolling Stone Philosophy).
Patience—the finale... tomorrow
