Patience is too often in short supply!! I have to admit that this is a virtue which I don’t have an abundance of and on a bad day I never seem to have enough. Perhaps you too have been feeling that the number of situations that demand patience of you seem to be on the increase.
A typical day seems to present numerous occasions that call upon one’s patience – telephone calls to arrange service which land one in ‘call center hell’, the clock ticking as you wait patiently in hopes of speaking to a human being before the phone/computer cuts you off. Worse yet when you do get cut off and have to repeat your entire litany again before you are inevitably told “now hold on while I transfer you to the person who can help you with that”!!! And don’t we need patience when we arrive for a doctor’s appointment only to be told after waiting patiently for thirty minutes that she is “running an hour late” for an appointment that you had to wait a month to get.
Those who commute by car during rush hour require a reservoir of patience, and lately it seems that no matter when you are driving you need more and more patience. And let’s not forget how much patience you need when you take an entire day off to wait at home for the service technician during the ‘8 am till 6 pm’ window only to have him arrive at 5:45 pm. And woe, then after what seems to be only a cursory inspection he tells you that he doesn’t have the right part, that the part will have to be ordered and he will need to return on another day to finish the repair. Heaven help you if he walks out saying “just call the service center to reschedule”.
And then there are the situations involving family when you’re waiting for a spouse, sibling or other loved ones to take care of some small task or large responsibility on a time line that bears no resemblance to your own. This situation necessitates even more patience if their task/responsibility is important or if what you are trying to accomplish hinges on their completing their part of the joint project. If this is a pattern in the relationship then this requires even more patience!*!
But all of that falls under the heading of small life annoyances that require patience. What about the important stuff that requires enormous patience – the recovery of a loved one fighting a life threatening disease, major decisions of your employer that affect your work environment and career progress, or bigger still awaiting the realization of life aspirations and dreams? These are just a few of the many situations, circumstances and relationships that test your patience and test your faith in yourself and well, in forces beyond yourself that serve your highest purpose. The difficult part is thinking we know what the ‘best outcome’ is, only to realize later (if we are fortunate) that what we desire and what will serve our highest purpose is not the same thing. This is the kind of situation that demands patience on steroids!
The more I learn about the potential conflict between the desires of the ego personality and the soul’s aspiration for a lifetime, the more I realize that patience is not merely a virtue but it is essential for maintaining one’s balance. Not only that, patience is the most essential ingredient to not despairing or falling despondent when life does not unfold as hoped or planned. And so that’s the good news about the myriad daily annoyances that test our patience – they are exercises to get us in shape so that we can let go of the desires of our ego personality to allow our soul to accomplish its aspirations for this lifetime. You might even consider them as spiritual weight lifting.
This conundrum was brilliantly articulated by Joseph Campbell who said “we must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us”. And if that doesn’t require super patience, I don’t know what does!
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