"The greatest power
is often simple patience."
-- E. Joseph Cossman
My Life Lessons
This is a series of revelations about my life that I am sharing with others for what it may be worth. These come from a lifetime of study and experience of others and myself, and I now translate them to words. These will be numbered; however, they are not in order of importance as all are equally important. It is just a way for me to keep track of them in this series. I hope you find value in them.
Life Lesson #14
Patience is not only a virtue, it's just plain fun.
I have learned to be a patient man, and I have learned it from people and circumstances that challenged me to make that choice. Well, I accepted the challenges with eagerness because I made a decision that I wanted to learn to be a patient man.
Some people think that having patience is enduring something, which sounds like that stiff-upper-lip thing in England. Patience in the Bible is often spoken in the same manner. To me that is more like tolerance, meaning you are putting up with it though you do not want to. Maybe you can't even wait to get out of the situation to get back into the world of fast moving impatience.
I borrowed a bit of a quote from Wayne Dyer and created my own about this subject. Here it is: "Patience isn't tolerating or putting up with. It is allowing things, situations, or people to be as they are without any insistence that they be anything else." I think that says it nicely.
To me patience is also calmness. I remember several years ago when I first read a quote by James Allen, and as soon as I read it, the whole thing resonated with me and I wanted to become that person. Here's the quote: "The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom." Isn't that a wonderful image? I love it.
All of these are great. Each is well spoken and describes the idea of patience nicely. From the time I was a child, I had always heard the quote, "patience is a virtue." I never really knew what it meant, and putting it into practice was torture. Later in my life, after finally making a decision that I wanted to become a patient man, I found that practice was what helped me get it going, and after a time, I began to have fun with it, and now I look forward to opportunities where I can practice it.
But, before I could really practice it, I had to get rid of the idea of tolerance, endurance, holding my breath, and other ideas of patience. What I found was that it was more real when I would unplug from the situation, suspend all judgment, and the key word was to relax.
So, I went back to my vision of the tug-o-war and my struggle to pull the rope was my impatience with the situation or the person, and patience was more obvious to me as in letting go of the rope. I began to practice as if I were standing outside just watching the situation with no real interest other than to just enjoy it. That worked extremely well.
My stepping back, letting go of the rope and just observing brought me joy. I was really having fun and smiling the whole time. Others around me might be complaining, demonstrating their impatience and so on, and here I was in the same situation, having joy. Who knew? It's hard to say how much of a difference it has made in my recent life, but it is tremendous.
"Circumstance Does Not Make The Man; It Reveals Him To Himself." -- James Allen
Spread Some Joy Today--Let go of the rope. Relax. Breathe deeply. Experience joy.
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