What is patience, what is the definition and what is the interpretation, what is the truth about it and what are the false assumptions? The people who use this word, in most cases use it in a manner to cover up their incompetence and they use it “because they are incompetent”. So, what that means in turn, is that they present patience… as a false virtue, something to be worshipped.
Moreover, often laziness and unwillingness to perform under the pressure and to perform fast, hidden under the mask of patience. Waste of time is not patience even if it dressed like it.
In fact, a lot of people are unable to differentiate between the realities and cover-ups. And this is understandable. The average person lacks the tools he needs to understand his actions in the perspective of time ahead, in the moment when that action takes place. And this is only the time when the direction could be adjusted and outcomes could be changed.
However there is a true patience. If it understood correctly and cultivated, it becomes a virtue. It is the patience of a silent snake before the attack, a frozen tiger before the jump, a stillness of the finger on the trigger. A moment of hesitation before the final decision has been made, before the point of no return has been crossed.
There are certain elements required for an effective performance: knowledge, practice, ability, desire, determination and more. It is general knowledge. But then some runners run faster and win the prize, while others with the same skills and determination left behind. There is only one element which transforms the performance into art. And that element is missing in the later case. It is patience.
The patience allows the performer to capture the moment in time when the direction is favorable and all surrounding elements and events are aligned and synchronized.
One may think that the person who can execute swiftly, competently and effectively has no need of patience, because he has already swept through the method, process, or his practiced and organized manner of doing things, be they mental or physical. A person, who is patient, is a person who knows what he is doing and therefore executes his action immediately and with great expediency.
This perspective is logically sound; however it masks or mistakes the process of completion with the moment of initiation. When the decision is made, when the action is initiated, there are other elements that enter into play: swiftness, efficacy, lightening like movement.
A person of great knowledge and competency but impatient is a poster child for this disaster, because knowledge and competency are just like signposts but nothing ever repeats itself. Impatience is blindness versus patience is wisdom. Wisdom not to trust yesterday’s knowledge because it is outdated and never true anymore, there are the other unknown variables that entered the picture. Nothing is ever the same and nothing is as it appears to be. To understand this reality is easy but not enough.
The person must be aware, alert, self-critical and self-confident to stay on course, to use his ability to maximize and compensate for his shortcomings, to be able to stay out of the ditch. This problem, with enough effort, is manageable. Another problem is more complicated and beyond the control of any man. There are more active forces in play. Those forces confuse our language, teach us to misuse the meaning, replace our clarity with dullness. Those forces deliberately misplace the values and qualities; they simply keep us all in a ditch that progresses into the mass grave long before we die. A social conditioning is a name for one of them. And this subject is a topic for the next conversation. © 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya
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