Ponderers love to pontificate about patience. It’s a topic that lends itself to catchy aphorisms.
“Patience is a virtue,” said every grandmother ever. Aristotle offered the tasty, “patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” Gandhi used a more militant metaphor when he warned, “to lose patience is to lose the battle.” Julius Caesar, like Aristotle, highlighted the difficulty of maintaining patience with, “it is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
Given our current situation – political and social unrest, a persistent pandemic, and strained social interactions that inevitably accompany our year-end holiday celebrations – many of us are finding it difficult to maintain even a veneer of patience. I’m right there with you!
Be Patient, You Turkey
My family LOVES Thanksgiving. Why? Because we generally get along and have fun together. We have our familial stresses and strains, to be sure. But usually when we have an excuse to come together and blab and laugh and play, we’re all in.
This year, we had planned to congregate at Grandpa’s house (that’s me) for our traditional Thanksgiving play/laugh/blab thing. But damn if this rotten, stinking coronavirus didn’t spoil our plans! (Pause … breathe …) As the pandemic spiked in November, our Thanksgiving plans gave way to caution and, like many of you, we decided to gather remotely to avoid mixing households.
Spoiler alert: we had a wonderful time (thanks to Zoom and to my kids’ “turkey taxi masked delivery service.” But I still found it difficult to find my emotional path to acceptance and enjoyment. It definitely took some extra patience.
Patience Defined
Let’s back up a bit. What is patience? Is it simply, as some dictionaries define it, “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, difficulty, or annoyance without getting angry or upset?” Yes. But patience is more than merely a “capacity” – it’s also a skill that can be learned and honed. Plus, that list of things to accept or tolerate is much too short. What about pain, or boredom, or disappointment, or hopelessness, or losing your keys, or …? You get my point.
When we decided to abandon our Thanksgiving plans, I initially reacted with pissy anger. In fact, I surprised myself at just how sullen I became, although only for an hour or so. That may sound more like faulty emotional regulation than a lack of patience. But I suspect that my pissy foot-stomping stemmed less from a lack of control and more from my thinly worn patience at having to continue to tolerate current circumstances, including our eighth month of quarantine and the unprecedented (and somewhat frightening) political circus.
Nerd Patience
I watched an episode of “Star Trek: Discovery” the other day. (Hey, I’m quarantined). In that episode, we see a man in the distant future repeating his morning routine many times. His living space includes very cool futuristic accoutrements, including a holographic bird alarm clock, a disappearing bed, and a mirror that cleans his teeth. Nevertheless, his routine is quite familiar to us: every morning he turns off his alarm, makes his bed, brushes his teeth, dresses, and begins his workday.
We eventually learn that this man is living on a disabled spaceship and that he is possibly the sole survivor of a once flourishing organization (yes, fellow nerds, it’s the Federation). His task each day is to search for “signals” from other members of that organization. The only thing that can officially relieve him of his task is an officer of that organization – a “higher up,” as it were. He could simply abandon his post, of course. But this man has apparently decided that continuing to attend to his assignment is important. So, he searches. When we first see this man, he has been enacting his daily routine every day for over 40 years.
Is this what we mean when we speak of patience? Was this man being patient by performing his assignment every day? Or had he resigned himself to an endless routine of daily searching with no hope of success?
Or is patience more akin to the ability to control pissy outbursts when your plans keep changing because of a stupid, endless pandemic?
Perhaps it’s both.
The Patience Rainbow
I talk a lot about acceptance in these posts – grateful acceptance of life as it is and as it unfolds. Patience is both required for, and indicative of, the kind of acceptance I’m talking about. Patience is also a quality required for mindfulness – one of the primary attributes that I recommend targeting in any wellness program.
Patience, then, is the ability to focus on, and to appreciate, the flow of present moments and the activities and events that unfold in those moments, despite the distractive pressure of discomfort, urges, or unhappiness. But wait, there’s more! (Isn’t there always?)
I like to categorize patience into 3 categories according to hue:
Green Patience
Patience required to navigate an uncomfortable or stressful situation without becoming overly anxious or angry.
This kind of patience is most akin to the dictionary definition.
Red Patience
Patience required to tolerate and overcome (or outlast) a craving.
Addicts will recognize this kind of patience,
and likely agree with my choice of color.
Blue Patience
Patience required to persist through prolonged discontentment. We can also refer to this as “existential patience.”
The more you develop your capacity for blue patience, the more opportunities you will have to gratefully appreciate each and every moment of your life.
Our capacity for each form of patience can be increased through practice. The following are some tips and tricks you might consider trying.
To develop Green Patience, it’s best to focus on your emotional regulation skills. Each time you confront an uncomfortable or stressful situation – like an interruption, a misbehaving child, a dropped glass, a disgruntled customer, or some other disappointing turn of events – remember the power of the pause. Step back (figuratively and, if appropriate, physically), take one or two deep breaths, and mentally repeat whatever calming mantra works for you. I often use, “no worries, I’ve got this.” That kind of pause creates a space for you to insert your calm, grown-up self into the situation.
To develop Red Patience, pausing can be helpful, but it’s generally insufficient to fully fend off a craving. For me, adding a distractive action helps. I’ve struggled with binge eating for most of my adult life. You’d think I would have tamed that beast by age 66. But even now, the battle rages. Catching my cravings early helps tremendously, as does having a few distractive actions at the ready. As I become aware of my growing urge to stuff my gut, I usually have the wherewithal now to pause and silently proclaim, “no worries, I’ve got this,” which helps me step back and at least recognize that a craving is developing, which indicates that I’m experiencing some form of anxiety or stress. Then, based on my long experience, I chuckle a bit at how feeble that pronouncement still sounds. Rarely have I “got this” without some serious tussling. So, before it’s too late – before I feel out of control – I execute one of my distractive actions. Often, a 5-minute meditation followed by a new task (a work assignment, working on my next blog post, or cleaning my toilet) will do the trick. Sometimes, though, I need to phone a friend (which usually means texting my ex). Sometimes, when my craving approaches that “I don’t give a shit” intensity, I need to leave the house – usually for a long walk (masked, of course). That formula – meditation, new task, reaching out for support, and changing location – usually works. Not always, but usually.
Blue Patience is existential patience – the patience required to endure the often life-long burden of our relentless desire for life to be different. I won’t lie, Blue Patience usually takes some serious effort and quite a long time to cultivate. It often requires a daily meditative practice in which you explore and accept the reality that learning to want what you have is much better than continuing to obsess about what you don’t have. If you’re new to meditation and you’d like a beginner’s cheat sheet, click here.
All Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
That’s not true, of course – that all good things come to those who wait. Waiting alone won’t assure good things, any more than meditation will guaranty a joyous life. Nevertheless, cultivating patience, of any hue, can increase the odds that you will feel and appreciate many more moments of this exceptionally interesting life than you otherwise might. So …
Be patient.