Patience and waiting:
“Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.”
-Anonymous
“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience.”
-Anonymous
“All good things come to he who waits”
-Proverb
“Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.”
-Eknath Easwaran
“Patience is the art of hoping.”
-Marquis deVauvenargues
“Patience can conquer destiny”
-Irish Saying
“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”
-Buddhist Proverb
So as you can probably tell I'm struggling with patience. I value patience immensly and know it is an important virtue to have and I pride myself with actually having a great deal of it despite my ADHD "gifts."
"Desire exists as the enemy of patience and in turn sometimes even the enemy of the desire-er themself. "
-Me
Patience means waiting to act or speak until you can do so without causing harm. “Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it.” [Chodron pg. 1 Emphasis added] “It also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting.”[*1]
While this article is mainly abut stemming anger (of which I posess non at the moment) I still found it's counselings beneficial. I especially liked the sentimate of patient containing a "enormous honesty." Something I think a large portion of people don't often stop and consider. I myself was foreign to the concept that delaying action in order to persue a more passive and contemplative pespective showed an increase in respect and honesty towards the situation. It gives you, the persuer of action, the ability to stand back and evaluate their true stance on a subject by melding your initial emotional instincts with your logical brain and thus, arriving at a more honest conclusion.
Emotions are indeed very honest but remember that they are also bised. In order to come to the most honest conclusion of a scenario you must be patient and ask yourself questions from many different angles.
To be honest, I'm having a difficult time gathering my thoughts and coherently directing myself to a conclusion.
Suffice it to say that the smartest and most succesful decisions are those given an adequate period of evaluation.
I believe in taking time to make the best possible decision you can and then sticking to that decision as firmly as you can.
That last quote about walking the right path brings up another question and that is, how do I know I'm on the righ path? I feel so strongly that I am but are my feelings enough. My feelings are biased and logic dictates therefore not to be trusted. However, at the moment they're all I have- feelngs and hopeful aspirations.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[*1]Chodron, Pema. "The Answer to Anger & Aggression Is Patience." About Buddhism. Shambhala Sun Foundation. Web. 13 Sept. 2011. <http://buddhism.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ>.
