Let’s understand first what virtue means. Virtue means a behaviour or an outward expression of a feeling that relates to good habits. In short virtue is a demonstration of moral greatness. People high in ethics, who have a balance of the feeling of righteousness and moral standards practice virtue in daily life. This leads to achievement of individual and collective greatness.
Patience means the ability of an individual to wait for something, object, event or achievement to occur without any feeling of anger, frustration and restlessness.
So how does patience become a virtue?
The idea behind this expression goes as far back as the fifth century, to the epic poem Psychomachia. This poem serves to highlight Christian ideals and describes vices and virtues as people fighting one another. In the poem, Patience is one of the virtues, which is fighting Anger. The first time the expression appeared in English was in a poem called Piers Ploughman, written by William Langland, around the year 1360.
Having understood this, how does one develop patience? What must one do to practice this on a regular basis, so that we adopt and adapt the same in our daily lives?
Look around you, we are living in an era of quick fixes. Time being the most important asset today, we are constantly under pressure to perform and deliver results quickly. Our daily life revolves around instant noodles and instant food products, instant tea/coffee mixes, instant masalas, instant connects, instant responses to social media posts, instant reviews, instant shopping and the list can be so long thanks to technology and artificial intelligence taking over.
So how does one manage this tricky dilemma and maintain calmness of the mind, when everything around you is chaotic, rushed and feels like a whirlpool!
Here are four ways to be the patient person you never thought you could be.
- Learn to make yourself wait.
- Stop doing things that aren’t urgent and Important.
- Be mindful of the things making you impatient.
- Relax and take deep breaths.
It’s all in the magic of practising the 4R’s in our daily routine.
- Reflect and introspect what is causing this impatience:
Take time to introspect and understand what is causing the feeling of restlessness and impatience. What is it that annoys you the most and how have you been reacting to this feeling all this while. What does this do to you, identify the symptoms and signals in the way your body is reacting to the uneasiness.
- Recognise the need to make a conscious effort:
Acknowledge that if you continue to choose to react in the same manner, things will never improve. Accept that you feel the need to try hard and are willing to make a conscious effort to not display your frustration and you are willing to recognise the need to make an effort to wait and be patient and have the intention to watch and lets things happen at their own pace.
- Respond Differently:
Having recognised accepted that you intend to take up the challenge to make a conscious effort, one now needs to replace the usual reaction with a different response. Decide how you choose to respond to future occurrences of such triggers.
- Practice to reinforce:
Awareness of the need to repeat this on an ongoing basis leads to making patience a habit. Very soon you will realise that over time you have controlled your impatience and ad-hoc reactions, and actually display and face situation of a lot more calmness.
Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing.
It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day.
Patience turns mulberry leaves into silk through the silkworm.
Patience turns water into wine through the grape wine.
Patience turns a man into a beloved teacher through stillness.
———RUMI
Suparna's Yugen 