About ten to 15 million years ago a 65,000 square mile region spanning parts of the states of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon formed into a plateau called the Columbia basin by means of the upwelling of lava through cracks in the earth's crust. Today, that area is like a high desert, arid, and it lies between two mountain ranges, the Cascades to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east.

According to the Wikipedia:

¦ Plateaus are classified according to their surrounding environment, common categories are: intermontane, piedmont, and continental plateaus.

¦ Intermontane plateaus are the highest in the world, these plateaus are bordered by mountains. The Tibetan plateau is one such plateau.

¦ Piedmont plateaus are bordered on one side by mountains and on the other by a plain or sea.

¦ Continental plateaus are bordered on all sides by the plains or seas, form away from mountains.

This, however, is not what I think of when I think these days about a plateau. While a plateau can literally be an area of relatively level high ground, it can also carry a figurative meaning. A plateau can point to a state of little or no change following a period of activity or progress. Some people call these "lulls", as in "the lull before the storm".

I do not know if there is a storm coming, but I do know that I have been through a period of intense activity and positive development. We just got back from an international conference in Philadelphia at which I met with colleagues in psychology, psychotherapy, gestalt therapy, organizational consulting, and coaching from Russia, Israel, France, Germany, England, Korea, Japan, Australia, Mexico, and the USA. We discussed, among other things, an international research project that will bring together practitioner-researchers to produce practice-based evidence for the effectiveness of gestalt psychotherapy, and these people will offer data from clusters working in England, France, Russia, Turkey, the Czech Republic, South Korea, South Africa, the USA, Taiwan, Sweden, and Greece. It was an exciting conference with a full agenda. I am tired.

The plateau is a bit disorienting. It feels like a holding pattern just a bit above the normal elevation of things, but still existing between where I've been and where I'm going next. "Going" does not necessarily refer to a geographic location but to a place in life. What waits ahead? It cannot be seen clearly. In the meantime, there are things that demand attention here on the plateau. One must, after all, carry water, find food, and build a fire to give light and keep warm at night.

Can you relate? Perhaps you are between jobs. Maybe you have left a significant relationship and sense that there is someone still out there for you, but you have not current "leads." Maybe you just finished your university education and face getting on with the rest of your life, but then wonder where to start or what is to become of you.

Life on the plateau is not really like being lost. One is not lost; one knows where one is and how one got there, but the sense of existing between is tangible.

The foremost challenge of living on the plateau is patience. One has to wait. One has to tend to the chores of current living, always aware that something else is looming large on the horizon, but that it's just out of sight.

Blythe and Croft, in their article appearing in the February, 2010 issue of Adaptive Behavior ("Can a science-humanities collaboration be successful?") stated that patience was necessary to achieve goals that bridge the divide between formal modeling and empirical approaches in a single line of research. That seems so technical, so scientific. It takes patience to threat a needle, and most people can understand that patience is required for most things that matter in life. I recall the joke about the famer who pulled up his plants to see if they were growing roots. Without patience, we run ahead of the processes of life in which we ourselves put down roots and grow. We cannot run ahead of ourselves without running out of the ground upon which we stand or the support and nurture that we need to live.

When it comes to working with other people, no matter what the context for that, patience is important. Schout, de Jong, and Zeelan, in an article in appearing in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that altruism, a degree of compassion, loyalty, involvement, tenacity, a critical attitude to the mainstream, flexibility, optimism, diplomacy, creativity, a certain degree of immunity to stress, and patience allow care providers to establish contact and win trust in regard to the people with whom they work.

Thus, learning to live productively on the various plateaus of life has a beneficial result. It not only builds character, but it develops patience. Have you ever prayed, "Lord, give me patience?" That is a dangerous prayer. It can lead to extended sojourns on the plateau. One does not simply get patience poured into them; one endures the experience of being between this and that, one tends the fires and carries the water while living one day and another, then another, and then another on the plateau. One learns that each day has enough to concern oneself about. One learns to appreciate the beauty of the plateau.