“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow — that is patience.” – Leo Tolstoy
If I had a dime for every time I’ve told my kids, grandkids, or dog to “be patient” or “patience is a virtue,” I’d have an awful lot of dimes. Maybe not enough to be rich by today’s standards, but certainly enough to pay a bill or two. And yet, the person I most need to remind to be patient is myself.
I’m in month two of recuperation from a back injury that has hampered my sleep and my regular routines. I’m getting better by degrees, but I’m having to remind myself daily to be patient and let myself heal.
Patience, as Tolstoy wrote, is not just waiting. It’s HOW we wait for something — it’s waiting with a good attitude. It’s not the incessant drone of “are we there yet?” coming from the backseat on a road trip. It’s not getting annoyed when that one workout fails to produce ripped abs, or eating one salad doesn’t result in instant weight loss. Patience is continuing to water the seeds in the garden even when you don’t see evidence of growth. It’s acknowledging that life is a learning experience from birth until the day we end up on the post office door (and maybe even beyond that) and that we never really “arrive” or “finish.” For those of us (the impatient ones) who like to check the boxes to mark tasks as complete, that can be frustrating.
I’d like to think I’m getting more patient as I get older, but I don’t think that’s actually true. I’m just getting a tiny bit better at being patient in situations I’ve already been through. Every new obstacle that crops up is another opportunity to practice the virtue of patience.