Patience is everything
February, a time that we mourn the loss of most, if not all, of our new year resolutions. Everything we intended to do — read more, start meditating, get healthy etc—gobbled up by deeply intrenched habits. Leaving us frustrated and impatient, as if, somehow, this January was going to be different to the last. New habits are hard.
And they’re hard because replacing old ones takes time, and why the hell would we wait one to three months for a ‘new habit’ to arrive when we can book and get in an Uber in under three minutes? Convenience has killed patience. Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke weighs in perfectly, as always:
“There is here no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!” — Rilke
Rilke asks us to not worry if all of the seeds we’ve planted haven’t grown and ripened in a month. Rather, he invites us to be patient — to care for them with intention and have confidence that, over time, they will bear fruit. A simple enough invitation, but, for most, this will feel closer to impossible than easy.
The reasons for this move in widening circles from the personal to the cultural. We, as individuals, avoid patience at all costs because patience requires us to sit with discomfort. From waiting in line at the grocery store to stepping into an elevator, it feels as though our lives are filled with moments we want to move through quickly. This shows up in our culture as well. It seems everything and everyone is calling us to get more things done in less time. Patience and productivity are at odds in our Western culture.
Yet we all know what is gifted to us when we employ patience like an Oak tree employs its Autumn leaves. This is evident in meditative practices. When sitting for an extended period of time, for example, it is inevitable that we will encounter discomfort. From annoying sounds to numb toes. Whatever shape it takes, when we observe discomfort and accept its presence we notice that it arrives only to leave. The sound of a fly buzzing near your ear is irritating, yes, but it won’t last forever. It is bound to change. What makes it more irritating is when we wish it would leave. The frustration only makes the discomfort sharper, more piercing . What is required for discomfort to soften is patience.
“One must, in the dead leaves that rustle around one, already see the young fresh green of spring, compose oneself in patience, and wait. Patience is the only true foundation on which to make one’s dreams come true.” — Franz Kafka
Meditation, as a practice, provides us the opportunity to practice patience. To notice how we react to irritation and discomfort and inquire how this reaction may show itself in other areas in our lives. What does our reaction to a fly buzzing say about how we react to our “annoying” colleague or friend? Maybe nothing, maybe something. But I believe that the more we can practice being patient with the small, seemingly unimportant things, the better equiped we will be to be patient with the large, seemingly important things (e.g. relationships, loss, heartbreak etc.) Simple? Yes. Easy? Of course not. But like everything, it is something we must practice.
