It is not so much that you have to be more patient. It is that you have to be less impatient.

You know that the more you are hurried or hassled, the less capable you are. It is the same for the people you are impatient with. You worsen the situation.

And when it is your computer you are impatient with, it is the same. You jumble the computer with your impatience. If computers were oxen, you would be gentle and kind with yours. You wouldn’t lash your ox until it couldn’t get up. You are not always so nice to your computer.

As with so many things in life, you take the computer personally. You feel it does not love you one day. You feel it is being uncooperative. The computer, like people in your life, was willing but confused. However your computer behaves, it is at your mercy. You are the trainer of it.

If your dog is unruly, who is responsible?

Train yourself.

When it comes to your computer, allow your computer a moment to choose. Because your computer has not yet decided its exact course – that is no reason for you to throw up your hands in despair. You give up too soon. Allow your computer to have a bad morning. Can’t it have one for every hundred or thousand of yours? Believe Me, your computer has put up with a lot from you and extended you every courtesy. It has not sworn at you.

You are the only difficulty you have, beloveds. You are the culprit. The computer is innocent. And you are innocent too in your doggedness. You seem to really think that being aggrieved by your computer or pressing keys hard will make it come around to the speed and cooperation you want. What about your being cooperative?

I am speaking of computers now, yet it is the same when any person or any situation frustrates you.

You already know what doesn’t work. You know all the fussing and fuming doesn’t work. Try another tack. Surprise your imagined opponent. Surprise yourself. You are the one who opposes you. You set traps for yourself, and then you are annoyed and resentful. Clear the way for yourself then. Open the windows of your heart and mind and allow others, people and machines, to be what they are. They simply are not always top of the line any more than you are.

What is all this perfection that you require about anyway?

You would like the control, and yet you play the role of victim. Who is mixed up today? You or your computer? You or your employee? You or your boss? You or your car?

When you are feeling annoyed, you find something to be annoyed about. This is your modus operandi. You are the one who has set certain wheels in motion. Reset them now. Open up the Heavens as you would a skylight. Let in fresh air. Honor all the human and mechanical instruments that offer themselves up to you. Don’t complain, even to yourself, about what you are aggrieved with. Better yet, don’t be aggrieved.

Be the breath of fresh air that you desire life to be. Be good to yourself in that you don’t have to find fault. Find understanding instead. Find a place inside yourself where storm does not enter. Find a quiet corner of yourself where peace reigns. If you do sincerely want peace in your life, be the peace you desire. If you seek the Kingdom, where else will you find it but within yourself?