Forgotten Skills of The 21st Century Series: 1. Patience.
You can't appreciate anything without first having patience.
The place I seem to hear most about patience is in love songs.
I've been waiting…. I will be waiting… I will continue to wait for you do do dooo…
But whereas it may be romantic, it isn't real patience.
It's more an unhealthy obsession and form of emotional self-flagellation.
The next place there seems to be a lot of patience is in the day-to-day waiting around that's present and unavoidable in most of our lives.
Waiting to be served in a restaurant or bar, standing at the bus stop, queuing at the shops, waiting for replies to emails and messages.
But we most often do these things reluctantly: while pacing or tapping our phones, silently cursing the staff, and anxiously wishing the time would pass quicker.
This is mostly tolerating or, at best, patiently waiting. It's not real patience.
Ah, but what about the daily grind, putting the hours in and working day-in-and-day-out for a monthly pay check.
Surely that's patience?
It could be, but it's mostly self-discipline, determination, habit, and doing what you need to in the name of achieving something or getting somewhere else.
So what is real patience?
Maybe the dictionary has the answer. Patience is:
"the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset."
Hmm. Is patience just accepting that waiting is a fact of life and, instead of strangling the useless waiting staff or leaving your job or sending your partner an ultimatum essay because they haven’t replied to your message from 3 hours ago, it's about trying your best to stay calm, tolerate, and even enjoy these moments?
Or, is it something else?
When efficiency is the goal, waiting is a bug in the system.
The modern world is trying to pack more and more into less and less time.
Things are so fast today that you can have groceries before shopping for them, own a new sofa before paying for it, be anywhere without leaving your house, and even reach fame and fortune without building a career or any skills.
The space between wanting and having, between leaving and arriving, is being reduced further and further until it barely exists at all.
This is fantastic news! I hear the Silicon Valley moguls say.
I mean, who likes to wait?
Few today would choose walking over taking a taxi, cooking a 4-hour meal over going to a restaurant or getting a takeaway, or waiting 2 months to grow tomatoes over a quick trip to the supermarket.
Waiting is old-fashioned. Waiting is for chumps and Luddites and old people who are too slow, lazy, or unmotivated to keep up and are just naively watching their lives pass them by.
If you hadn’t already got the memo, advances in technology have transformed waiting from a part of life into a choice—just like old diseases like scurvy and smallpox.
If your app doesn’t give you an almost instantaneous service, each and every spare moment you have can be used to catch up on messages, hear priceless insights from a famous CEO, post on or scroll social media, learn how to speak Mandarin, and basically do more stuff.
Waiting is old news.
Not because it doesn’t exist, but because it’s now possible to eternally avoid and escape it.
We have a socially acceptable way to escape wherever we are physically and emotionally into a world of instant and ubiquitous information, communication, and entertainment.
Waiting isn’t necessarily a virtue. But in a world where waiting can be escaped and the distance between to want and to get is pretty much zero, there is little to no chance of recognizing the value of patience.
Rushing everywhere & never arriving anywhere.
The modern world is always busy rushing everywhere and so never arrives anywhere.
Before we start one thing, it's already out of date and we're onto the next. Before we're onto the next thing, it's out of fashion and a million other things have taken its place.
It's like one neverending game of hopscotch.
Each square is another moment, step, or achievement in life.
We're never fully able to be at (and, in turn, appreciate) each square as we only ever have one foot on the ground and most of our body is already thinking about and moving towards the next square.
There are moments when both feet land. But when they do, we remain internally agitated and are unable to stop playing hopscotch underneath our skin.
We have a sense something is missing or isn't quite right. As if what we're really looking for or need is to be found in the next square, or the next, or the next…
Maybe if I had more money, more followers, more shoes, more experiences, a bigger house, a bigger car, a better wife, a better job, I wouldn't feel so unhappy, doubtful, insecure, bored... etc.
Having a busy life and wanting for more and better isn't a bad thing.
The problem is when this turns into trying to satisfy an insatiable sense of emptiness and the feeling of not having or being enough.
What's missing here is the recognition that we can’t, and wouldn’t even want, to have everything all at once.
We don't and can't wait.
The value of patience has disappeared.
The true value of patience is appreciation.
It took time to read this newsletter (for better or for worse).
It takes time to make a good risotto or whatever is your favorite home cooked dish.
It takes time to discover what you'd like to do in life, to raise a child, to learn an instrument or any skill, to write a book, to form bonds, to build a stable career…
Many of the most meaningful things in life take time.
There are no apps or shortcuts that can give you a ready-made, fully functioning child or reveal to you your vocation in a click.
Nor would you want them.
The very fact they can't be bought, are not easy, they can't be achieved by everyone, they unfold over many hours and stages, many of which are dull and painful, is what makes them meaningful.
And yet, when efficiency is the name of the game, long processes can be tolerated, but only when they’re unavoidable steps towards a clear and definitive goal, and anything that’s uncomfortable or difficult or unexpected is a just an obstacle that’s getting in the way.
This type of patience is cleverly disguised impatience. We restrain ourselves from immediate urges, put up and shut up, and force ourselves to hold out for a result.
We’re striving for some other thing or moment, busy patiently waiting to arrive at the destination, and so we don’t or can’t see that the act of taking each step is the reward or destination in itself.
In impatience, fastness, efficiency, and achievement hold the highest value.
In patience, slowness, quality, and the journey hold the highest value.
This isn’t the same as appearing like a saint and never rushing.
It also isn’t about becoming a minimalist hippy that never gets anything done.
It’s about fully appreciating the life you have and are living now, instead of always longing for some other imaginary life or speeding towards an ever-changing goal.
When you’re not living for efficiency and not always grasping for more, you’re trusting that some things take time and that you are and have enough.
When you’re trusting that some things take time and that you are and have enough, you’re practicing patience.
When you’re practicing patience, you’re infinitely more able to appreciate the moments or squares you’re in.
And when you appreciate each moment, there’s nowhere else to get to and nothing else to want or wait for.
Trust + Patience = Appreciation
You can’t appreciate life without first having patience. Lose patience and you lose appreciation. The more patience you have, the more you can appreciate life.
But as you can see, you also can’t have patience without first letting go of grasping and learning to trust.
But the thing is, to trust, you also first need patience to be with your impatience and tendencies to want more.
Thankfully, the equation also works the other way around.
Appreciation = Patience + Trust
If you can appreciate something, patience is by default present. When patience is present, you’re also demonstrating trust.
Try it for yourself.
Next time you’re feeling impatient while waiting at the dentist or when raising a little demon or when trying to achieve your goals in life, ask yourself:
What am I not appreciating here?
If you can’t find anything, try giving yourself a little patience. If you can’t find any patience, see if you can bring in a little, or a lot, of trust.
And if you can’t find patience or trust, then don’t worry.
Allowing them time to unfold is the best way to practice them.
Your friend,
Joe
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