Impatience

According to Eckhart Tolle, impatience is the hallmark of unhappiness. Unhappiness, of course, is the root of addictive behavior. If you were happy, why on earth would you stick needles in your arms, eat until you hurt, spend until you were not only broke but behind on rent? No happy people need that; they are genetically averse to such self-loathing.

There is a super morbidly obese woman in my office who I think of every time I hear the word Impatient. She is a walking punctuation mark to Tolle's assertion. I used to hate her. Today, I understand her.

I never hated Janice (let's call her Janice) because she was fat, although fat was not adequate a word to describe her. Much like the waking world of chairs, restaurant booths, airplane seatbelts, "fat" does not fit her. She is obese. Soberingly obese. Obese enough to halt laughter in people's throats. Obese enough to make even a mean kid feel real concern at the immediate threat to her health, not to mention her quality of life. I wince internally when I am near her.

I couldn't hate her for being in such a sorry state.

I hated her because of her impatience with everyone. Even herself. Always hiding. Always glossing over. Always moving too damn fast.

As if knowing her appearance illicits sympathy and pity, Janice's personality has blossomed sickly into a self-preserving tornado of charisma that destroys, obfuscates, confuses and tricks anyone or any situation that crosses her path. Nobody knows what she is really like, what she is really doing. The ranges of opinions on her character are staggering from a group of such educated people. But it's the same self-preserving tornado that whipped up the eating frenzy and protected the real Janice in layers of hardened, packed adipose. It is a survival mechanism deep inside her that knows that bleach will clean anything. It will also kill every living thing it comes into contact with. It reminds me of the cloud of dust around Pigpen's character; hers is a miasma of double talk, half truths, and lies worthy of any 1980's Enron trader.

Oh, how I hated her personality.

Hate, though, is a wasteful emotion. It is not productive unless you are my apartment, in which case, I turn to cleaning furiously. It's not a meditative cleaning, it's combative with jagged energy, occasionally relieved by my remembering to unclench my jaw. It was threatening to overtake me as I found myself unclenching my jaw during the work day, specifically when she was in the office.

Sensing the impending destruction of my inner harmony and organ function, I managed - by the grace of The Spaghetti Monster - to get out from her dictatorship, where she could no longer change my business strategy on a whim, forcing a "do over" every three months in our sales organization. She could no longer send me out as a cliche, food-obsessed overweight person, buy birthday cakes for the "office" or bring back FOR her, her lunch. And now that I'm out of the center of the storm, I have nothing but pity for her.

She is impatient in all matters of business, cagey as a subordinate and unfortunately for her subordinates, awarded with an upper management position that leaves roughly twenty people victim to whatever side of the ship she’s leaning towards, causing a nervous, unsure, awkward stampede from her underlings. She avoids process. She argues. She maneuvers, manipulates, changes her mind every thirty seconds, and denies whatever crazy law she’d put into place a week before. There’s a saying around here: Don’t like what Janice is suggesting? Wait a week. She’ll forget.

She drew me into her office and asked me all about the Band. She compliments me often, making me cringe back inside with the weird light in her eye that is anything but happy for my success. She found a doctor insane enough to perform the surgery given her weight, stints in her heart, blood thinning medication, and two months post-chemotherapeutic condition. When she heard she would have to attend two information/group sessions, it blew apart.

“I’m not doing that,” she said, aggravated, flapping her hands dismissively. They reminded me of skittish doves. “I’m too busy.”

Too busy to save her own life.

She’s smoking again.

Janice is overwhelmingly unhappy. I could wish the Lap Band on her, I could wish the Bypass on her, I could even wish Death on her, anything to relieve her throbbing open-woundedness that reminds me so excruciatingly of me, five years ago. But since I've actually attempted to become more aware of the world, the righteous anger has fluttered down from the air. She's not a monster. She's not tragic or misunderstood, either.

She is only asleep.

She is closing her eyes and turning away, building her stories, repeating them to herself until she almost believes it's not as bad as it really is. Oh, but it is. Two heart attacks, one breast cancer, and ongoing pizza/cheese fries/sneaking cigarettes later, her time is ticking at best.

This is the end of the movie for her. Will she keep hiding? Will she take responsibility? Will she save her self as the timer ticks down to zero?

I just don't know. I think she's going to be one of the ones that has to come back and do it all over again.

Wake up, dammit. It's time to get up.