Word of the Week

Patience

Definition: the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence

Consider this...

Sometimes, it’s not easy to be patient. Indeed, my partner tells me that I lack patience most of the time. She’s not wrong.

I try very hard to exercise patience, but it’s hard because I like things done quickly, efficiently, and right. Unfortunately for me and my own sense of calm, the world doesn’t work in those three ways.

But that doesn’t keep me from recognizing the importance of patience, both for me and for those around me. When I’m patient - if I can become so calmly - I feel better about life. My heart beats more regularly, my temper doesn’t flare up, and I can roll with the punches, as it were. On the contrary, when I’m impatient, I become irratible and a bear to be around.

I feel like those in the world of Size Acceptance also have to exercise an inordinate amount of patience on a regular basis - not that those in Size Acceptance are as impatient as I, but that they are even more constantly attacked by a world that is not quick, efficient or, largely speaking, right.

Every day they’re bombarded with diet and weight loss messages. In the face of such nonsense, they must exercise the utmost patience. But it can be such a struggle, because it’s so frustrating to constantly be told that there’s something wrong with you - that you need to lose weight, be thin, fit into a suze 4 bikini, have no hair anywhere but your head, be tanner, be taller, etc. etc. - especially when those “wrong” things are nothing more than societal beauty standards.

Yes, it requires a lot of patience to ignore that nonsense day in and day out.

It also takes a lot of patience to wait for a time when people of all different body shapes and sizes will be treated the same way, both under the law and societally.

But, with patience, however thin it wears, we wait and we work for a better future that requires less patience.