
“House of Stairs” (1951) by M. C. Escher
I’m going to tell you a story about patience or the lack thereof, otherwise known as “impatience”. You see, occasionally I’ve been accused of being an impatient person. A few times I came dangerously close to believing it myself. Like the New Year’s Eve, when I was 12 years old, and got a fever because I wasn’t allowed to open my gifts until midnight. Yes, I was curious and wanted to open them and no, I didn’t want to wait. As a result of my “desires” in that moment, I didn’t explode and act out, I imploded and got a fever…. but that was that evening and it doesn’t actually tell you so much about me.
(Now let’s fast-forward a little bit…)
Yesterday I was at the underground junction and at the entrance there is a sort of clock which showed that my train was coming in two minutes. Surrounded with crowds of people, around me and ahead of me, I started climbing the stairs and naturally began to skip them, as I usually do. There were several flights of stairs and the longer I walked the faster I got. At one point I realized that all the people were behind me. All I could see ahead of me at that point were stairs. However, neither my speed nor the style of my walking were affected by this. I continued to skip the stairs at an almost running speed until I reached the station. As expected, there was plenty of time left until my train would arrive, but that was ok. The amount of time was the same either way, and I was totally fine with waiting at the station, but I do prefer a free view ahead of me. So it’s really just a matter of personal preference and has nothing at all to do with patience.
You see that, right?
More importantly, do you see the main difference between these two instances?
And no, I don’t mean the age.




