patience
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
It’s said that patience is a virtue. So I guess it’s fitting that I’ve never considered myself to be all that virtuous. My patience these days is questionable – whether I’m dealing with stagnancy in the workplace, complacency within tangled friendships or simply observing others going through the motions of life. It’s not as if I’m swinging in the opposite direction – road rage x 10 or hurling profanities at others seemingly out of the blue. It’s more of a perpetual exasperation. Wondering why I’m the only one bearing witness to these things and recognizing the need for change. Even if that difference is slight.
But you can’t force change within others. And there’s an omnipresent resistance that I feel bearing its weight down. I think the change I’m craving is on the horizon, but it’s like staring at the sun when things look all melted and hazy. Maybe the trick is not to consider patience as a virtue, but more as a coping mechanism to allow those around me to catch up before taking a few more steps forward. Then again, maybe I am just the pot-stirrer in everyone’s perception.
“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
It’s said that patience is a virtue. So I guess it’s fitting that I’ve never considered myself to be all that virtuous. My patience these days is questionable – whether I’m dealing with stagnancy in the workplace, complacency within tangled friendships or simply observing others going through the motions of life. It’s not as if I’m swinging in the opposite direction – road rage x 10 or hurling profanities at others seemingly out of the blue. It’s more of a perpetual exasperation. Wondering why I’m the only one bearing witness to these things and recognizing the need for change. Even if that difference is slight.
But you can’t force change within others. And there’s an omnipresent resistance that I feel bearing its weight down. I think the change I’m craving is on the horizon, but it’s like staring at the sun when things look all melted and hazy. Maybe the trick is not to consider patience as a virtue, but more as a coping mechanism to allow those around me to catch up before taking a few more steps forward. Then again, maybe I am just the pot-stirrer in everyone’s perception.
“Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
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