Q: My question is: How do you master patience when you have a lot of passion? I’m an actor. I have done a lot of work back in New York. I moved here and got a manager, and she’s been helping me find an agency. Sometimes I get frustrated because of my passion. I feel I have something to give to the world, and I feel like it is delayed when things aren’t happening at a certain time, you know? Tonight, when you mentioned the unknown, it helped me a lot, I realized that you really don’t have control. I think when you do things, or you’re proactive it convinces you that you do have control, because you expect results.
A: Exactly, but it’s all an illusion. You’re convinced you have control, but it’s just a convincing. It’s not true. You get sold an idea, and it looks real, but it’s not. Actually, you are giving right now. You’re always giving. Now, you need to know that anything that any of us have to give, we are always giving. Maybe not in the exact way you would prefer to be giving it. Maybe not in the exact form that you would prefer to be experiencing it—as a giving, as an actor getting paid, with a job, acting. But really, part of understanding for real, that whole insight that the unknown is right here, right now—that that’s the only place you can be, because that’s where you actually are—includes this idea of “everybody has something to give; everybody has a gift to share.” It includes that.
You don’t have a choice about that either. That also happens whether you want it to or not. You might have your own ideas—and you do; that’s what you’re explaining. Most of us do. You might have your own idea about what that should look like, what it is, what the gift is, what you have to share. What I’m saying to you is, it’s a bigger mystery than that. The unknown is more happening than that, and you don’t know what you’re actually sharing. You don’t really, actually, truly know what the gift is that you’re giving. You don’t even know who’s getting it and what they’re doing with it. At the most, all you can know is something is transpiring. There is some kind of interplay happening. That’s the most you can know. And even that is not real solid.
I’m giving you the deepest possible answer to, “What do I do with the impatience?” The deepest answer is, “Impatient for what? You’re not even doing anything to begin with.” The real way to be more patient and to share the gift wider, is to live more in that unknown. To more and more know that you aren’t controlling anything. To more and more know that you aren’t doing what you think you are doing. I’m not saying stop doing, but I am saying, you don’t know. You really, truly don’t know the actual results of anything you do.
You could say something on Tuesday to somebody, and not know that somebody in the back of the room heard it and it changed their life. And they went out and did something, and that had an effect on their great-grandchild one hundred and ten years from now. You wouldn’t know that. But that happens all the time. That’s the practical way the unknown works. It simply means, you don’t know. We don’t know. It’s bigger than us.
So Know that more. Plug into that more for real. And then you can be as passionate as you want and it will not drive you so nuts.