Wednesday, August 02, 2006
The virtue of patience
By Rene Lizada
Papa's Table
CONFUCIUS is one of my favorite philosophers. He is astute and sometimes funny. Today let me share with you one of his writings that deal with something that I am struggling with. Something that I would like to have but am having difficulty in getting. Patience.
"Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents from being accomplished."
If you look at nature and how it works, one will discover that everything happens when it should happen. In nature things are not forced, they just happen at their "appointed time" to use a cliché. The seasons come when it is time and no one can stop that. When you are injured or when you are sick, the healing will come and the healing will take time. Everything in nature happens according to its in place and its time.
Ironically, it is the most intelligent of animals that does not understand the concept of waiting, of patience. As people, we always want to be in a hurry. We want things done right away. Our society is judged in the swift and frenetic pace that we have imposed. We cannot wait, we will not wait. We want quick fixes for everything. And we suffer for it.
In the Course of Miracles, there is a phrase there that deals with patience and it may seem contradictory and yet of we examine it carefully, it makes perfect sense. And it goes "Infinite patience produces immediate results." Let me try to explain with my experience in writing speeches. Whenever I give seminars in speechmaking, the inevitable question comes up. "How long does it take me to write a speech?" And my answer has always been the same. It takes a week and twenty minutes. A week to think about it and twenty minutes to write it. And yet those twenty minutes will never happen if I do not have the week.
I spend a week thinking about the topic, letting it into my heart and my mind, playing around with it, looking at it from different angles, agreeing and disagreeing with my ideas, formulating the structure and the main ideas. And when I am done, and I know when I am done, I sit down and it just happens. The words flow because it has been "marinated" enough. I had been patient with it and therefore the speech just comes out, like magic. But it isn't really magic rather it is product of patience and focus. How I wish I could relate that to my life because by nature, I am a very impatient person. I look at small advantages and think that they are victories when in reality they are not. Sometimes I catch myself with small trivial events that I judge as advantages only to realize that they were nothing compared to the true picture. It is like a sentence in a speech. It is only a part that must be recognized. A line is not a speech. Only a part of it.
Patience is something that I need to learn because it is only with patience that the full reality of things will happen. If I try to force things they may not be completed, as they should be. We all know the story of the man who pried open the cocoon to set the butterfly free because he pitied the butterfly. But when it came out the butterfly could not fly because the man interfered. The butterfly had broken wings. And so shall we if we are impatient.
Everything has its time. Everything has an "appointed time" and when it comes, it is as unstoppable as the high tides that sweep the shore. Nothing can stop it. The key is to be patient, to wait. As always, I am trying to be patient but if you are like me, you are like that saint who prayed, "Lord give me patience and give it to me now."
Perhaps we can take our cue from the origin of the word patience. It comes from the Latin patientia, which means to endure, to suffer. To be patient is to suffer because we cannot wait and yet to be patient also means to endure. And we must endure the waiting with hope and faith because in the end, all things will come together.
To have this waiting attitude one must acknowledge that we are not in control. To think that we are in charge of our lives is the biggest fallacy there is. We are not. God is. And we must lay all that we are, our plans, our wishes to Him or Her. To say, "Lord even if I am impatient, I know that you are leading me somewhere, I know that even if I am suffering all these things, even if I am blind and know not where this road is leading me, or why this has happened, I trust you enough that you will reveal to me your purpose and your reason, in Your time. Teach me to be patient, to endure, to suffer, to wait for Your will."
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