Buddha and his disciples once embarked on a long journey. Exhausted from a long day of walking, they decided to stop and rest near a lake. Buddha asked his youngest and most impatient disciple to walk to the lake and bring him some water, so he did. But when he arrived at the lake, he saw a group of oxen crossing it, which muddied the water. The discipline thought to himself: “I can’t bring this dirty water to Buddha.” He returned and told Buddha about the water. The Buddha said nothing until a few moments later, asking his disciple again to bring him some water from the lake. As expected, the water was still dirty. Later on, the Buddha asked his disciple the same question again. Angrily and cursing, he went to the lake, expecting that the water was still dirty and undrinkable. But, to his surprise, the water was crystal clear. The muddiness of the lake was only temporary. After a while, the mud settled, and the water became clear again. The monk couldn’t force the water to clear up, and there wasn’t anything he could do to speed up the process. In all likelihood, any intervention would have made it worse. Psychiatrist and philosopher Viktor Frankl once stated: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”. In the monk’s case, he couldn’t do anything about the muddiness of the lake or the Buddha repeatedly asking to bring him some water. He wasn’t able to change these circumstances. So, the only thing the impatient monk could do was change his attitude toward these circumstances. As the muddy water would eventually clear up by itself, all he had to do was wait patiently for nature to play itself out, which was the lesson Buddha intended to teach. Patience would have saved the monk from the pain of anger and dissatisfaction.
This story explores several benefits of patience and why patience is power.
Patience & Impatience
As the Buddha’s story illustrated: The problem with impatience is the suffering it causes to the impatient person and, potentially, to his surroundings. An impatient person experiences dissatisfaction with the current circumstances. This dissatisfaction can be strong enough to cause an angry outburst. The phenomenon of “road rage” as a consequence of traffic jams is an example of this. Not only is impatience unpleasant, but it’s also pointless. Impatience is the unwillingness to live life at the pace it actually happens; we wish for the universe to bend to our will. We want things now. We want things to change in an instant. But in reality, external circumstances are not up to us: no matter how much we wish that to be the case. Patience, the opposite virtue, is based on the acceptance of what is. As Oxford Languages defines it: “The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” When practiced in everyday life, patience has several benefits, including not only the absence of dissatisfaction but also making better decisions and improving one’s dealings with others. We’ll now explore five benefits of patience.
(1) The natural flow
Most of the time, rushing things doesn’t really help in terms of achieving our goals. Moreover, trying to force the process may even be detrimental. A previous story about the Taoist concept of wu wei explored the art of effort action (or non-doing). It told a story about a farmer who desperately tried to grow his crops. But as his interventions conflicted with the natural course, his effort didn’t help. In fact, they went against the flow of nature. The Taoists observed that using force backfires and leads to ruin. Nature has its own plan and moves at its own speed; it operates optimally without our interference. Philosopher Michel de Montaigne stated, and I quote: The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself. According to Taoist philosophy, we can either embark on the flow of nature and navigate through life more effortlessly or swim against the flow, expending copious amounts of energy in exchange for low returns. But how do we float along with the natural course? One of the prerequisites is patience. Patience allows us to let nature do the work for us, as we’re willing to align our expectations with nature’s speed. An example of using patience to tap into the natural flow is creativity. By and large, our creative impulses come and go spontaneously, so we cannot will ourselves into being creative. Writer’s block generally occurs after a period of forcing our creativity. And the more we try, the worse it gets. But, more often than not, if we leave it alone and stop trying, our creativity returns spontaneously. Hence, Charles Bukowski’s poem So You Want to Be a Writer states: if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else.
(2) Wiser (more rational) decisions
As opposed to doubt and overthinking, careful consideration before making an important decision often turns out well. The difference between doubt and overthinking and carefully considering our options is that the former is repetitive and generally doesn’t lead to any substantial resolution. On the other hand, careful consideration means we weigh different options and explore possible outcomes, typically using reason and logic. But doing so requires clarity of mind. If emotions have taken us over, we tend not to make rational decisions, as we base our decision-making on impulses evoked by, for example, anger or fear. If, for example, we decide to end a friendship amid a heated quarrel, there’s a reasonable chance of regretting that decision.Applying patience before deciding benefits our lives as it allows us to decide from a place of clarity and peace of mind. Specifically, in this context, patience is an instrument of self-control for letting our emotions dissolve and not acting upon them. Ideas from folk wisdom, such as “to sleep on it” before making a decision or “to count to ten” until acting, are practical, straightforward ways of applying patience to one’s life.
(3) Equanimity
Impatience can turn people mad. That’s why we generally don’t like waiting. But because of our impatience, we let external circumstances decide how we feel. The ancient Stoics considered the latter problematic. If external events determine our emotional state, they exercise power over us: The whims of Fortune decide whether or not we get angry, frustrated, or anxious. A common source of frustration for people is waiting for a train, then finding out it’s delayed. And thus, they fidget around on the platform, often visibly annoyed, as the train doesn’t arrive as soon as expected. Not long after, another announcement says the train is delayed even longer. As a consequence, some of the commuters get mad and start cursing. But those that are patient simply take note of the delay and wait for the train with minimal suffering. As mentioned earlier, impatience results from dissatisfaction with current circumstances. Patience, however, allows us to accept these circumstances; to not let them affect our serenity. Why would we let ourselves be swayed by things we cannot control, like delayed trains, muddy water, or difficult people? Through patience, our equanimity won’t be disturbed by such encounters.
(4) Perseverance & Success
Perseverance can lead to long-term results. But to persevere, one needs patience: one needs to stop desiring quick results, which, unfortunately, people seem to pursue nowadays. It’s prevalent for people to start something but never push through, for example, when they decide to lose weight or build muscle. They begin working towards their goal but quickly lose their motivation and quit. Generally, this loss of motivation comes from being too focused on the results rather than the process itself. When the desired outcome doesn’t appear as quickly as expected, one gets dissatisfied with the circumstances and becomes impatient. And if results remain absent, many people tend to stop whatever they’re doing, through which these results would eventually ensue. Writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard wrote: How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success. If one works toward a goal while being patient regarding the results, the lack of results (at least for a reasonable period) will not be a demotivating factor. Again, patience grants us the ability to accept or tolerate delay. Another story about a farmer trying to grow a bamboo tree shows how patience led to the necessary persistence to achieve his goal. The seeds of this particular bamboo tree take five years to even start growing, meaning that the years before, the farmer needed to water and care for them without seeing any results. During those years, it seemed like his work was in vain, and the bamboo tree would never start growing. Nevertheless, the farmer remained patient, trusted the process, and thus proceeded with his daily efforts. After five years of consistently watering and taking care of the seeds, the bamboo tree suddenly shot up. The farmer’s patience had paid off. We can compare the farmer’s situation to many modern life examples of how patience helps us achieve long-term goals. For example, when investing in the stock market, it generally takes decades to see significant profits from compound interest. Also, on average, new businesses take about three to four years to become profitable. Success on YouTube may come quicker when lucky, but it generally takes years to occur if it ever happens. Patience allows us to endure these periods without compensation for our efforts. Undoubtedly, summoning such patience isn’t easy: It’s bitter, but its potential fruit is sweet.
(5) Tolerance for others
We do not control the actions and will of other people. And thus, those around us may do things we don’t like and refuse to do what we wish them to do. Yet, many people expect that others behave in ways they want. And when they don’t, they experience dissatisfaction. Fights between couples often originate from one party doing (or not doing) something that conflicts with the other party’s desire and expectation. We get impatient because we don’t want people to behave as they do; we want them to act differently and think differently, despite us not having a say in this matter. The ancient Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius, recognized that we have no choice in regard to which people appear in our lives. We’ll meet with ungrateful, deceitful, rude, ill-willed people, whether we like it or not. There’s nothing we can do about it. However, we can change our attitude towards them. We can let these people disturb us, or we can accept their existence and that encountering them from time to time is unavoidable, and there’s no reason to be bothered by what we can’t do anything about. By having patience with people, we not only neutralize their power to disturb our peace of mind; we also accept their flaws and, thus, their humanity. In his book The Hidden Power of Kindness, missionary Lawrence Lovasik stated: The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another’s defects, and the bearing of one another’s burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, and in society. Patience increases tolerance towards one another, allows us to listen before we speak, be more empathic and forgiving, and be less likely to respond and react in ways we later regret. It’s a habit that strengthens our overall position toward the outside world and ourselves. Impatience implies intolerance, foolishness, weakness, and suffering. Patience means tolerance, wisdom, strength, and equanimity. So, that’s why patience is power.
Note: This article is collected from Einzelgänger’s youtube channel.
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