Snow Melt

Patience

16 Nur 164 BE – Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The Thesaurus gives the following words under patience – endurance, staying power, tolerance, lack of complaint, persistence, fortitude, and serenity. For impatience it shows these words – annoyance, irritation, edginess, intolerance, eagerness, keenness, anxiety, hurry, haste, impulsiveness, impetuosity, rashness, zeal, enthusiasm, and excitement. The reason I looked up patience and it antonym impatience is the realization that I need to be a little more patient in specific situations.

OK, I thought I was patient, but I’m not patient in all situations and lately the impatience is rearing its ugly head. I also have difficulty with procrastination (I think I’ve mentioned this before), negative thinking (especially in the past few months), and a few other thing. Lately the problem is that when I decided to set a goal, achieve something or do something, then the universe sets out to stop me. OK, maybe this is something I’ve had a slight problem with before and never confronted.

I didn’t expect to be writing about patience and my problems with it today. When I started this entry yesterday and go interrupted, the subject was prayer. In fact I even started a poem about prayer, but then the universe kicked me in the teeth (which probably explains why I have only five teeth left my lower jaw). I’ll include the start here before going on with patience.

Prayer

Silently Earth prays
Giving gratitude to God

Now back to patience, which is a virtue. I suppose that make its antonym a vice. I’ve been getting pissed a lot lately, especially with the situation I’m in. I think there is something I should be able to do about it, but I can’t see what. I think that’s the main problem, normally if I can see how to alleviate a problem I’m fine. It’s when I can’t see a solution or can’t find a way to take action myself that I seem to get impatient with myself and the situation.

I can be patient with other people, most of the time. Traffic and other drivers seem to bring out my impatience. I don’t like driving in traffic when it’s too hot or too cold, the reason for this is I have to keep the window on the driver’s side rolled down all the time (I might get into that later or not). Anyway the hotter it gets the more impatient I get (this also may explain speeding ticks and the ticket for running the red light).

My mother says I’m not as happy as I used to be and I worry more. This could be a symptom of impatience. Maybe I need to concentrate on developing patience or increasing what I already have. Until I look up the word in the thesaurus, I didn’t realize there were so many subtle implications to the virtue. Patience has a great deal to do with faith: faith in one’s self, faith in God and faith in prayer. In fact, patience has an effect of the achievement of goals, which may explain my difficulty in setting and achieving.

I don’t want to wait, to endure, to persist until it’s completed. I want it to be easy to achieve despite the fact that I know goals need to be set somewhat difficult to stretch a person’s talents. A too easy goal will prevent one from developing and a goal that’s too difficult will just disappoint.

“O you who believe, seek courage in fortitude and prayer, for God is with those who are patient and persevere.”
Al-Qur’an 2:153

Food for Patient Thought

Question: What is the most patient creature on earth?
Answer: A snail!

One thing I would like to know is this. Why is it when you encounter a virtue or vice that you have difficulty with everything after the realization test it. In this case, everything seems to be “testing my patience”. I do mean everything; even my web browser is testing it. Maybe I’m just too sensitive to it right now.