Patience

One year ago this week I was on a study abroad trip in Peru. As a part of that trip, I got to visit Machu Picchu. It's truly an amazing place and something that is just hard to wrap your head around when you think of how it was constructed so long ago. Peru is a country that makes its money from tourism and sights like Machu Picchu generate a lot of revenue for them in many ways. For that reason, it's also hard to wrap your head around the fact that no one has visited the site since the middle of March. Well, almost no one. 

A story broke this week about a Japanese man, Jesse Katayama, that has traveling around the world when the pandemic lockdown began. He was in Peru, with a ticket to see the famous site the week that everything shut down. Rather than going home, Jesse decided to stay in Peru, originally thinking that it would reopen in a couple of weeks. That stay turned into six months. During that time, Jesse Katayama opened a boxing studio and taught people of all ages in the city of Cusco. His story caught the attention of many locals and eventually politicians took notice. The people loved his dedication and service to the community and pushed hard for him to be granted access to Machu Picchu. Last week that finally happened as he was granted access, by himself, to visit the site. His patience had paid off. 

I'm not the most patient person sometimes. I get caught being eager to accomplish something and I want results to happen. I want answers now to questions that I have. I think in a lot of ways, our lack of patience is really at the heart of why we still wrestle with the restrictions that we have as a society. When we run out of patience, we look to someone that we believe can or should make the problem go away. Unfortunatly, many of them don't have all the answers right now either. 

I don't know that there is much that I can do to feel less impatient, but I do think that I do have a choice in how I react to it. I really admire how Jesse Katayama decided to make himself as useful as could while he waited. Staying busy and working to improve things around you can fulfill us while we wait for what we really want. When I thought about it from that perspective, I thought about a lot of the people that I work with. We all are likely growing impatient for school and life to return to some semblance of normalcy soon. But while we wait, many of you have been working hard to make the best of things around you. I've seen your attitudes shift and your productivity spike in new areas. To say the least, I'm inspired. Now I'm going to do my best to work on what I can, while we wait.