There was once a time when patience, if not personally cultivated for its own value, was invariably forced upon us by the pace of life. A letter took time to write and post, and time to be received, considered, and responded to by return post. Patience was necessary. The assignment of a school paper required a visit to the library, searching the stacks for needed references, reading, taking notes, reflecting, composing, and then typing the final paper. Patience was necessary. Shopping meant a trip to the store, browsing, purchasing, returning home, and back again if a return was warranted. Patience was needed. Publishing a book required research, an agent, a publisher, editing, re-editing, design, and a seemingly endless publication process. Patience was necessary. Now, with self-publishing, books can be move from inception to completion in a far shorter time span. There was a time when life’s adversities – mental distress and suffering – could not be short-circuited with ubiquitous distractions and instant gratification. There was once a time when we needed patience. Life required it.
In today’s world the need for patience has been transformed by the instant gratification of a speedy technology. No longer do we have to wait. No longer do we have to forbear the inconveniences of a slower pace of life. Patience is no longer a virtue. Speed is. Surely we have gained in many ways from the ability to connect more quickly, rapidly access information, and shorten the time taken for life’s chores. It is not my intention here to suggest that we turn back technology. That would be neither desirable nor possible. Rather, it is my intention to look at one of the side effects of our speedy lifestyle – the loss of the personal capacity for patience, and its consequences in modern day life.
Patience is the ability to experience and bear adversity, dissatisfaction, distress, and suffering with equanimity. It is the ability to accept with grace and dignity a delay in immediate gratification. It is the ability to allow and trust the natural rhythms of life. It is taking time to fully listen to a conversation from beginning to end – without interruptions, judgments, and the premature formulation of a response. It is the capacity to feel and experience the fullness and nuances of the present moment in that moment – to be with life rather than ahead of it. It is the capacity for sustained attention. Patience is essential for authentic intimacy, sustained commitment, contemplation, deliberation, and thoughtful speech and action. The virtue of patience imparts a certain quality and gravity to life. It is a key ingredient in the achievement of an optimal well-being of body, mind, and spirit.
For many years I have taught the traditional practice of meditation as an essential component of a “good” and healthy life. Participants attend my programs for many reasons. Foremost is the energy drain of an overactive runaway. We can’t stop it and we can’t live with it. For these individuals life seems increasingly out-of-control. Stress, time urgency, anxiety, and other forms of mental distress become routine. For some, these mental disturbances progress to physical symptoms. At a more nuanced level there is a subtle dissatisfaction with life, a sense that something has gone wrong, a sense that there must be “more to life.” That is what motivates a second look at life, and brings participants into my classes.
Central to this 8-week course is a daily meditation practice of 10-20 minutes. One would think that would be relatively easy to accomplish, given the minimal investment of time for a considerable return on well-being. After all, we take time each morning to care for our bodies, brush our teeth, bathe, and so on. We would not consider leaving the house with out this morning ritual. We would not put it off because we are traveling, entertaining visitors, or coping with a barking dog. We even have a room for it, our bathroom. Similarly, we attend to physical illness the moment it arises. Time and resources become immediately available. But how about caring for our mind, the source of our happiness or our suffering? Where is the time? Where is the quiet room?
It takes patience to learn meditation, to overcome the compulsion of “doing,” to simply be still, if only for a few moments. It takes patience to learn to care for the mind, as we do our body. It takes patience to overcome the automatic tendency to jump right to our “to do” list, get fidgety, stop before the practice session is over, and realize we are accomplishing something very important by taking time for our self.
It takes time to refine attention and mindfulness. It takes time to discover the natural stillness of the mind and the authentic source of self and truth. It takes time to gain mastery of our inner life and unfold the gifts of inner peace and joy. We are not only developing a meditation practice, we are developing the capacity to be rather than do, discovering the virtue of stillness in an overactive world, allowing the space for contemplation and discernment, and establishing the inner basis for a health life of body, mind, and spirit. Meditation both requires and teaches patience, and that is a theme that runs through our 8-sessions.
Once we’ve overcome the obstacle of impatience and progressed through the initial stages of establishing a meditation practice, we next focus on gaining mental stability. As we gain mental stability, we experience increasing moments of what could best be called “basic well-being,” an inner sense of peace, contentment, confidence, and “OKness.” This authentic and inner-based well-being is experienced as natural, innate, permanent, resilient, and immune to the adversities of life – including aging, disease, and death. Patience is a necessary capacity for the attainment of this enduring well-being, and it is also an innate quality of well-being.
How can we begin to practice and cultivate the skill of patience in our day-to-day life? Let me suggest four possible strategies, although there are many more. The first is the simple yet profound act of listening. To truly listen to another is to practice patience, cultivate meditation in daily life, and offer a rare and healing gift to both speaker and listener. Choose your practice session carefully. That means choose a conversation that is important to you, whether with a close one or a person you consider difficult. Relax your body, clear your mind, and begin to listen to the speaker with no goal in mind, except to hear the other’s communication. If a judgment, interpretation, reaction, a premature effort to formulate a response, or any other distraction disturbs your mind, let it go and return to a “passive” yet focused listening. You may have to clear your mind many times. But each time, your mind is learning to be patient. Listen until the other is finished, and let your response arise naturally at the conclusion of the conversation. It will. When the interaction, practiced in this manner, comes to an end you will both feel fully connected, still, and peaceful. Those are the rewards for practicing patience through the process of authentic listening.
The second suggestion is to practice patience in your moment-to-moment experience. We accomplish this by being fully present to the experience or activity at hand, whatever that may be. Over and over we stop our mind from jumping ahead to the next moment, as if it was dissatisfied with the present moment. We practice fully experiencing what is happening in the now. At first you might practice this a few times a day. Bring your mind back to the moment as many times as possible. Fortunately, the mind can be trained. Just as we train for multi-tasking we can train for mono tasking, for nowness. The reward is a slower mind, a more intense and joyful experience of the moment, cultivation of the habit of patience, and a serenity and joy that can only be found in full presence.
A third suggestion relates to those challenging moments in life, moments of stress, distress, and suffering. Our immediate tendency is to short-circuit these moments, seeking, as an antidote, immediate distraction or gratification. But these moments are a part of the human life. Difficult moments are neither permanent nor harmful. These are not thoughts and feelings that we need either embrace, reject, or suppress. There is an alternative, learning to “be” with these moments – learning to say hello with kindness, and then let them go. When we learn to sit with difficult thoughts and feelings, we feel “into” ourselves. We feel the poignancy and fullness of our life. We can then discover that we are not these thoughts and feelings, and further, at the center of distress, a certain peace and serenity can arise which naturally re-asserts a sense of well-being.
When we learn to be patient with the difficult moments in life, we stop fearing ourselves and grasping at instant but numbing antidotes. We can patiently live with difficulties. We know they will pass. We discover on our own that they are a gateway to an underlying depth and spaciousness. When we become confident in our capacity to live and move through whatever arises in life, inside or outside, we begin to live without fear – fear of our self, our difficult emotions, and life’s challenging experiences. And, isn’t that extraordinary. Cultivating patience in the midst of challenges turns them into important teachers, and offers us both a strength and confidence in our ability to “surf” all of life.
My fourth suggestion relates to the daily practice of meditation, which we have already briefly discussed. A daily meditation practice clears our mind, teaches us how the mind works, frees us from the tyranny of stress and emotional afflictions, introduces us to our deeper and more authentic self, and very directly teaches and cultivates the skill of patience. Just as you would look for the best available teacher when learning any skill, you will need a knowledgeable teacher to train you in the intricacies of meditation practice. You cannot do it yourself, or through a video or book.
Now, more than ever, patience can be seen as a treasured and essential human capacity, a necessary counterbalance to the speediness of life that destabilizes body, mind, and spirit. No longer forced upon us by life, we must proactively choose and cultivate the development of patience as an essential life skill. I have suggested four possible approaches, and there are many more. In fact, each moment provides an opportunity to practice and cultivate patience.
I would like to close here with the words of Jenifer Roberts, a Harvard art historian. “The virtue of patience was originally associated with forbearance or sufferance. It was about conforming oneself to the need to wait for things. But now that, generally, one need not wait for things, patience becomes an active and positive cognitive state. Where patience once indicated a lack of control, now it is a form of control over the tempo of contemporary life that otherwise controls us. Patience no longer connotes disempowerment—perhaps now patience is power."
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