Patience
“Patience” says the teacher.
“But when?” asks the student.
“When it is time.”
It is easy to conclude that patience is about doing nothing, about waiting, about delay.
That is not patience.
There is no point to waiting for goals to ripen when our lives can end in seconds. There is no point to hoping for a better day that may never come. This is not patience, this is waiting.
What is patience, then?
Patience is noticing. It is the asking of a question without too fast an answer. Perhaps the question is: is now the time to try again? Shall I use more force, more gentleness, something else? Will any effort move this forward, or must the world first change around me?
How can we know? We cannot know. Knowing is beyond us. But looking and seeing is not beyond us. Patience is a way of looking and seeing.
It is human to strive to gain what we desire. We imagine how the world could be with this thing in hand. In our imagining and planning we can forget to see how things are now. Thus blinded, the goal is even harder to grasp.
We may act or pause out of fear, fear of wasting time, fear of making mistakes. When fear drives us, this is also not patience.
Patience is not a lack of action, but a way of action. Patience is looking at what we want without desire and fear blotting out detail. Patience is pausing to look, taking measure of what is before us.
My offered practice: consider a delayed or thwarted desire. Hold the matter keenly in mind and heart. Allow drive and planning to come to the fore. Then pause. Breathe into desire to loosen and lighten it a little. Put aside planning for a moment. Notice the desire, touch it gently, but also look beyond and through it. Slow the moment. Watch the world through this slowed moment.
Patience is engaged observation.
Look again at the matter. Through desire and fear at the thing itself. Take measure of the situation. Is it time to try again? Let the flow of the world continue first? A third direction? A fourth?
Take another moment. Notice how things are. Look at the world beyond desire, past planning, past imagination.
This is patience.