for your own sake, stop talking

patience is a strategy of war, use it as such

this post is dedicated to phoebe, and every woman who inspires me.

are you a serpent, or are you a flower? do you go after what you want, or do you wait for the sun to shine on you? what is your relationship with patience? do you take kindly to people bulldozing you? how do you feel when men, or women, believe they can decide your future for you? does your blood boil at injustice? what is your character? which i’ve seen, and agree, that is defined as your reaction to conflict. literally nothing else matters.

if only life were that simplistic. if only. although not complicated because there are universal laws, life is as intricate as a shakespearean play. as is often the case with shakespeare, his villains are the second best part of his plays. the first being his mastery of the dubious and delightful ways one can use and misuse the english language.

in othello, the play about the moor, the moor-killer iago (short for santiago) holds othello and his ilk in contempt. partly due to racism. partly due to jealously. this is not an unfamiliar story. however, in one of his stanzas, iago strings together lines that have followed me since my first reading of the play:

“how poor are they that have not patience! what wound did ever heal but by degrees? thou know'st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft; and wit depends on dilatory time…

othello, act 2, scene 3

for all his evil, iago is a patient and methodical man. the kind that often gets what he wants. not because he’s ‘deserving’ (though, deserving has nothing to do with why we receive the things we want; see this universal law), but because he allows nature to take its course—once he’s placed it on the track he wants.

in high school i read sun tzu’s the art of war because i thought that would help me better prepare for the social environment (admittedly, i had been watching too many episodes of pretty little liars). although it did little to help me navigate school life and all its miscontents at 14, it has served as the lens in which i analyze all precarious situations i find myself in. say, work.

it’s not fun, living as if you constantly have to defend yourself. nor is it fun to not always feel appreciated for your efforts. but a fundamental truth holds: you have to let nature take its course. in anything you do, scheme or non-scheme, you must allow things to naturally unfold because the inevitable is, well, inevitable.

knowing the end before it happens gives you an advantage that allows you to calmly manage a situation with a clear mind. you know this is not the end. it’s just the middle. so, act accordingly.

life is won in the middle. not when you begin, or when you end, but how carefully you execute the middle. this is why the gurus advocate for process-oriented thinking as opposed to an outcome-focused mindset. the former is concerned with the actual work needed to do the thing while the latter just hyperfixates on the thing. only one will have the perseverance to push through. guess which one.

how do you when things are inevitable? for some things, you just feel it. you’ll begin to sense certain things by instinct, as refined by your prior experience with similar situations. for others, it’s really just the law of cause and effect.

taking it back to iago, he stated that “we work by wit, and not by witchcraft; and wit depends on dilatory time.” you have to outwit, outmaneuver, and outmaster all those who seek to destroy you. it’s the only way to destroy them, tactfully. lest, you run the risk of being taken down by/with them. this takes time, which we all have, and lots and lots of patience. oh, and playing your cards right.

i liken it to those scenes in any run-of-the-mill slasher film. there’s a grotesque house, likely on a hill, lightening flashing in the distance. then, a young woman enters the home, in search for an evil she knows is likely lurking somewhere in the house. prying her head in, she calls out, “is anyone there?” this is when the young woman puts the target on her back, narratively speaking. if you know there is evil just around the corner, do not alert it to your presence by calling out to it. further, do not let it know you know it’s evil. after all, real g’s move in silence…like lasagna.

but seriously. to defeat any evil in your life, you need to be patient and let nature take its course. why? because evil is likely using forces greater than our own to suppress or surpass us. so, to combat these forces, we need to work with what we have: time. time to think. time to strategize. time to action out our plan.

to use time is to be patient. to use time is to take your time. to use time is to trust that you are on time. that nature is, indeed, taking its course. that the evil, due to the law of cause and effect, will be deated. likely by you. you are the final girl, after all.

so, work by wit, and not witchcraft. live on dilatory time.

sweet dreams,

a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

i am beginning a new section in my nightly posts titled truth or dare. it’s a simple curated list of ideas and items i’ve engaged with today that i loved and am sharing with you. the truths were 10/10, so i must recommend. and the dares were not so great, so it’s me saying don’t do it. but only if you dare. get it? great. let’s begin:

truth: hot rollers. these are my favorite.

dare: letting people know you know that don’t need to know that you know.