Too little
Passing on the delay
I will keep asking until they understand how annoyed I am.
Someone becomes the target of a problem they may be unable to change.
Patience
The departure time has changed. The question can change too.
A willingness to allow worthwhile processes their necessary time.
Patience permits the time a worthwhile process or ordinary difficulty actually needs. Travel brings delays, unfamiliar exchanges and other people’s pace into view. You may dislike waiting and still decline to make the nearest person carry your frustration.
Patience gives less needless pressure during a wait
At the airport gate, the departure display changes again. You look from the new time to the agent and back, as though a third look might restore the old number. The agent did not cause the delay. Ask when another update is expected, or explain the connection you may miss. Then give the answer time to be useful. If the promised update does not arrive, a follow-up can be reasonable; the same complaint every two minutes adds little.
Finding the balance in Patience
An illustrative everyday situation
Ask a useful question during an airport delay, then allow time for the next update without blaming the gate agent.
A fitting response
Allowing time
When should I check for the next update?
You obtain what helps and let the process continue.
Pursued too far
Endless acquiescence
A patient person must never ask or leave.
A reasonable need disappears behind the performance of waiting well.
Patience can include asking what happens next.
When the situation changes
If waiting affects an access need, care responsibility or onward arrangement, state that need and ask about alternatives. Patience does not require concealing consequences.
What Patience makes possible
You can leave enough time for a question to be translated, a line to move or a companion to orient themselves. This does not make delay pleasant or acceptable in every case. It keeps frustration from automatically choosing your treatment of others.
Patience in ordinary life
A misunderstood request
Try a shorter explanation or another format. More volume is not necessarily more information.
A companion pauses
Someone needs longer to read a display. Agree where to meet or stay together by choice, instead of making the pause a contest over who is difficult.
Nearby virtues, different work
Equanimity
Equanimity steadies your response to changed circumstances; Patience allows the time involved.
Courtesy
Courtesy gives a question a considerate form, even when patience is being tested.
Patience and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Silent resentment
Saying nothing while saving up a later accusation can resemble Patience. Genuine Patience permits an honest, proportionate request.
Counterfeit: Unlimited waiting
Remaining indefinitely because leaving would seem impatient turns Patience into submission. A considered change of plan can be fitting.
How to cultivate Patience
Separate the delay from the person answering the question.
Ask for information that could change your decision.
Choose an appropriate point to reassess.
Try it today
You may express needs, leave, rest or seek help. Enduring harm or ignoring essential responsibilities is not a patience exercise.
During an ordinary delay, ask a useful question if needed, then give the answer time to matter. You may choose another arrangement.
While visiting an unfamiliar place
Give a delay the time it actually needs.
Questions worth returning to
Am I seeking an update or an audience for my irritation?
What would make continued waiting reasonable?
Keep the practice proportionate
You may express needs, leave, rest or seek help. Enduring harm or ignoring essential responsibilities is not a patience exercise.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
THE most patient people grow weary at last with being continually wetted with rain; except of course in the Scottish Highlands, where there are not enough fine intervals to point the difference.
Stevenson allows that even patient travelers tire of rain. Patience need not deny discomfort.
She repeated her instructions three times over to me, with the same goodnatur’d patience the third time as the first
The shopkeeper repeats directions without making the stranger pay for needing repetition. The novel supplies a concrete model, not a rule of unlimited availability.
In travelling, it pleases me that I may stay where I like, without inconvenience, and that I have a place wherein commodiously to divert myself.
His pleasure in being able to stay makes room for an unhurried choice. The privilege of flexible time is acknowledged rather than prescribed to every traveler.
Respect so far the holy laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect flower by your impatience for its opening.
In Friendship, Emerson asks that a connection be allowed its own opening. A promising travel encounter need not become immediate intimacy.
We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs, before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon.
Elizabeth proposes waiting for a real circumstance rather than arguing indefinitely about an imagined one. Sometimes more speculation supplies no useful information.
Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.
Thoreau names a plain cost of traveling together even while arguing for solitude. Company entails taking another person’s readiness seriously.
For charity begins blindfold; and only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at length into a settled principle of love and patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow-men.
Stevenson has been considering religious disagreement and mistaken assumptions. His patience includes allowing understanding to develop through imperfect encounters.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the fifteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. A local outing can be enough.