By CharLy Markwart
They say that patience is a virtue, and I have no doubt that it's true.
Patience, after all, has eluded mankind for centuries, and, especially in this “I want it now” society to which we have all become accustomed. It is perhaps the quality most difficult to acquire, and even more difficult to maintain.
At least it is for me. I have never been one particularly keen on waiting for the goals I've set for myself to become reality. To me, I guess it's always seemed that if I can envision it in my mind, I should be able to achieve it…now. And, while that ambitious mindset may do well in motivating me to passionately pursue worthy purposes, it has also caused me considerable heartbreak and frustration because of its ignorance of one significant life truth: Success requires patience.
Just ask the family of Harriet Richardson Ames, a retired New Hampshire schoolteacher who died early this year, just three weeks after celebrating her 100th birthday. Way back in 1931, Harriet earned her two-year teaching certificate from Keene Normal School. Throughout her subsequent career, she spent time teaching students in her beloved one-room schoolhouse before going on to become a 20-year teaching principal in a small-town elementary school. All the while, Harriet was also taking courses, one at a time, in order to earn credits toward the bachelor's degree that had become her own passionate life pursuit.
In 1971, however, with her eyesight failing, Ames was forced to retire from both her teaching position and her collegiate career, without being sure if she had acquired enough credits to earn her much sought-after degree. She didn't pursue the issue again until just a few years ago, when a professor from Keene State College, the school from which Ames had long hoped to graduate, interviewed her for a film about the school's centennial. When asked what wish she still hoped to see come true, the then 98-year-old said that is was to receive her degree.
That wish set the wheels in motion, and Keene State officials began looking into Ames' records, where after long months of research they found a pleasant surprise: enough credits to grant the teacher her degree and to fulfill the one wish that still lived so fervently in her aging heart.
“If I die tomorrow, I know I'll die happy, because my degree's in the works,” Harriet said, when school officials first told her they were looking into the possibility of her diploma.
Two years later, Ames did die, presumably very happily, just one day after several Keene State employees delivered that degree to her bedside. More than 80 years after stepping foot inside her first college class, and nearly 40 years after stepping out of her last, Harriet Ames was a college graduate. And, at 100 years old, the dream that she had patiently kept alive in her heart for so long had finally come true.
Slowly but surely, I am learning Harriet's lesson of patience and endurance. As I mature, I am realizing that success truly is a journey, not a destination. And, as much as I despise clichés like this one, Rome really wasn't built in a day.
So, where does that leave us? Well, for some, I know, it's an excuse not to dream, not to aspire, not to reach for great heights that they know are many years and many rungs up the ladder out of reach. And I, too, have often been tempted to feel that way during those frequent times when the end of my rainbow seems so very far out of sight.
But I know, as all of us do in our heart of hearts, that is not the right approach. I believe that life, in all of its aspects, was designed by a Master Creator as a great series of tests of our endurance. And, like many of us, I'm desperately striving to pass each of those little life tests that come my way, because I have come to know the reward that awaits me at the end of every one. Good things do come to those who wait, and as difficult as it is to practice patience through the process of getting there, success is sweetest when it is hardest to earn.
So, as much as I'd still like to reach the heights I'm striving for immediately, it's safe to say I'm learning to endure. I know now that the path to true and meaningful success is a long one, and I'm OK with that, because I've come to see that each step of the way is making me a stronger, braver and better human being. Although we don't realize it at the time, it is during our periods of great strife when we quietly become the people we've always known we could be.
I know I'm not alone when I say I'm in the midst of another of those strife-filled periods right now, but I will endure. I will endure, and I know I'll grow from it. And, most importantly, with Harriet's story in mind, I will patiently and persistently pursue my dreams until they finally do come true.
