From the Hart
Spring can’t come soon enough for Miranda Hart, but she’s reminding herself to be patient as she waits for the first buds on the trees
I'll be honest with you, my lovely reader chum, I’m not the most patient of people. With a mild fit of impatience coming upon me just now, I’ve been having a little stress-busting dance break in my office – as is my wont (though, I hasten to add, my office is me in pyjamas in a spare bedroom! That said, I think dance breaks in corporate offices should absolutely be a regular occurrence… I mean wouldn’t life be instantly a bit better if so?). The song I was bopping to was Queen’s I Want It All, but I ended up feeling a little frenetic instead of calmer (a frenetic bop by yours truly is quite the image – you’re welcome).
I think it’s because my impatience stems from, in part, being a dreamer. A lover of life. An adventurer. I have so many ideas and dreams and desires that sometimes excitement tips into an overwhelming impatience to just want it ALL and want it NOW, as the lyrics of said song say! And, of course, we now live in a society in which everything is on tap, immediately accessible, our attention spans and willpower waning. Perhaps more concerning, goals and dreams achieved early on in life are applauded and encouraged with the result that people are driven by unnecessary fear as we hear things like: ‘I need to have done X, Y and Z by the time I am 30 or else I’m a total failure.’ What does that even mean, when you think about it? Who is giving us timelines for our lives? It’s nonsense, my lovely reader chum; utter nonsense. Let you and your life unfold in its glorious right time.
That’s easy to spout, though. It does, of course, require patience. I look back and so many things came to me later in life, and I can now see how right that was. I wouldn’t want it any other way. (I wasn’t able to give up office-temping to be a full-time actor until I was 34.) At the time, however, I was often impatient and could have enjoyed the process infinitely more without that grasping, fearful energy of imposing my desired timeline. But our society doesn’t really teach us patience, does it? Even teenagers at GCSE level are being asked what they feel they might want to do for a career. Sure, some might have ideas, but in the main, children are only starting the adventure of working out who they are, let alone what they want to do. And who they are is far more important. We need to learn to be patient with ourselves, for worldly systems rarely let us take our gen
