Not enough patience to fly a kite

Matt Pearl

At no point in my life have I ever successfully flown a kite.

I’m not wired for the task. A person needs so many independent factors working together to make the feat possible: a windy day is just the first one.

You have to face the right way. You have to catch the wind, preferably during a gust that will take the kite high into the air. You have to keep the right amount of slack.

And then, when it’s all said and done, you’re holding a piece of paper (or more often now, plastic) on the end of a string and watching it not fall down. Your lone gift from the experience is the satisfaction that you (and a stout breeze) made it all come to pass.

I’m not patient enough to fly a kite, and that’s just about the long and short of it. Go ahead and call me flawed––you would not be wrong.

I enjoy the idea of flying kites, or fishing on a warm morning in the spring, or sipping coffee out on my deck while I read the morning paper. But I rarely do any of those things.

You’ve already read about me and kites. As far as the fishing goes, I have the same issue: I’m too impatient to wait for (or bring about) all the right factors to make fishing a success. If I don’t come home with lots of big fish, I feel like I have failed.

And as for drinking coffee on the porch and reading the paper: I dare you to move out to Empire Prairie and try to read a newspaper outdoors. The wind literally never stops blowing out there. So, I’ll drink a cup of joe outside on occasion, but do my extensive newspaper reading within.

All of this saddens me. What simple, patient pleasures of life am I missing––pastimes of the sort that my grandparents enjoyed almost daily––because so many people my age cannot approach any task without constant action and a measurable result?

If you’re not patient, you can’t enjoy flying kites or fishing. I have never tried to build a ship in a bottle, because I know it’s one of those tasks requiring quiet, slow, steady progress. I would sit down to build model cars as a kid––but I rarely finished any of them. Why?

Because I’m too squirrely. Incidentally, the irony that my last name rhymes with squirrel was not lost on my school friends years ago––but that’s another story.

Hunting? Nope. Too much sitting and waiting, hoping the deer won’t smell me.

Exercise? Not much. Who wants to work that hard if you have to wait weeks––months, even––until you look stronger? I’d rather eat less and walk a few more places to keep my gut in check.

This discussion has really snowballed into more than I had intended. As I read what I have honestly written about myself, I probably should never let it get to print. But you need to read it, and I need to write it.

I feel often that my ideas and notions are justified, and there are some folks out there who agree with certain of my opinions. But, as the adage goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Perhaps we discover a bit of truth together from time to time, but our desire to become better people each day should remain intact all the days of our lives.

Every piece of self-improvement literature I have ever read encourages the setting of reasonable, attainable goals, and also the implementing of a plan to make said goals come to fruition. I can’t tackle all of my weakness, but I think a little improvement approaching tasks requiring patience would be a good start for me.

Maybe some windy day this fall, I’ll fly a kite with my kids. If that breaks down, and all else fails, I’ll fix a cup of coffee and have one of them bring me the paper. It’s a start, right?

Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany, and Grant City.