Patience, Knowing, and Illumination

When I was 18, I found deep meaning in three Chinese symbols from the I Ching:

Patience. Knowing. Illumination.

At that age, patience wasn’t my strong suit. I was born and raised in New Jersey, where life moved fast and waiting wasn’t something we celebrated.

I longed for knowing. I craved certainty. I wanted to know where I was headed, who I was becoming, and what I was meant to do with my life.

I believed illumination would come after enough patience and enough learning.

Yesterday, I turned 51. And it turns out… I was right.

Over the years, patience has become one of my greatest allies. But so has knowing. Sometimes knowing doesn’t arrive because you’ve waited long enough. Sometimes it arrives all at once, and the only question is whether you’ll have the courage to act on it.

Maybe wisdom isn’t choosing patience or acting on what you know...

Maybe it’s knowing WHEN each one is required.

The part I understand differently now is illumination.

I always say, when you’re learning something new, it feels awkward and clumsy until one day… you level up.

But leveling up never happens overnight, but somehow, if you stick with it, you do.

What once felt impossible suddenly feels natural.

I’ve leveled up recently and here’s what I know now:

Stay within your own property lines.

If you find yourself doing work in someone else’s garden, mowing someone else’s lawn, or carrying responsibilities that belong to someone else’s backyard, it’s time to come home.

Come back to your own property.

Tend your own soil. Pull your own weeds. Plant what you want to grow.

Because there is something magnificently peaceful about caring for what belongs to you—and releasing responsibility for what belongs to someone else to care for.

That’s what illumination has been trying to teach me all along. Not that life becomes clearer because everyone else changes.

But because I finally stopped putting work into everyone else’s yard.

And when I returned home to myself, something extraordinary happened… my property became something I was even prouder of.

The only thing my backyard had ever been missing…

…was me.

And maybe that’s what those three symbols have been saying all along.

Have the patience to stay within your own lines.

Trust yourself enough to know.

And you’ll discover that illumination was never somewhere else.

It was waiting right inside of me.

Love you,

Happy Amy