Not everyone is endowed with the virtue called patience. Patience is a spiritual quality which can be cultivated only by employing sustained efforts towards reforming our lives. In today’s world, we can witness impatience everywhere. Everyone is on the run, no one wants to wait for anyone else, no one wants to stop, and no one wants to learn patience.
Patience is a quality that suggests several similar qualities like – restraint, tolerance, diligence, and courage. To cultivate patience, one needs to apply both one’s time and wisdom. There is a dearth of both today and hence patience is also very scarce. A person, who has no patience, does everything in a hurry. And when he does not devote sufficient time to the task, he fails to accomplish it well. There is just one way to cultivate this quality – understand its importance and put in best efforts to cultivate it.
Benjamin Franklin has said – “Patience is the most powerful means to attain a desired goal.” This is so because we have to first restrain ourselves from taking hasty decisions, understand the challenges facing us and then keep working with patience and diligence towards achieving our goals. If a person lacks patience, he would try to achieve his goal as quickly as possible, and in this haste, would not hesitate to adopt even foul means. This is what the state of affairs is today. People do not want to wait to attain their desired goals, do not want to put in sincere, sustained efforts. They keep searching only for shortcuts to get what they want. While if we have patience, we not only attain our goal eventually, we also attain happiness, new experiences and learnings, and peace of mind.
Here is a very inspiring tale about the virtue of patience. This was the time when Subhash Chandra Bose was in school. He was a brilliant student and was good in all subjects except for Bengli language. Once his Bengali teacher asked the students in his class to write an essay. Since Subhash was weak in the language, his essay had many errors. All his classmates made a lot of fun of him. One of the students said to Subhash, “You call yourself a patriot, but you don’t even know your mother tongue!” This remark pinched Subhash deeply and he began to study Bengali grammar with great diligence. This was not easy because a diligent, sustained effort towards the practice of language was required over a long time. But he had taken a firm resolve that he will not just pass in the language but would get the highest marks in his class.
Subhash began to learn the language in right earnest. With sincere daily practice, slowly he got a firm grip on Bengali. Examinations were near. All his classmates would say to Subhash, “You may do better than others in all subjects, but till you pass Bengali you would not come first in the class.” Annual examinations began. On the day of the result, the class teacher announced that Subhash had come first in the class. A boy who bore jealousy towards Subhash spoke up, “How is it possible? He barely passes in Bengali, how can he be the first?” The teacher smiled and replied, “But what is most amazing is that along with all other subjects, Subhash has got the highest marks in Bengali language as well!” Every child in the class was surprised to hear this. Subhash then told his classmates – “If there is patience, diligence, interest and concentration of mind, a person can attain whatever he wants to.”
Patience is a quality that is worth imbibing. A person who values time, is punctual, and devotes his time to every activity; only he can actually adopt patience. Albert Einstein once disclosed this mantra of his success, “I am not intelligent but I am extremely patient. Due to this alone, I can keep working on the problems for a long time.” This means that if a person can control his urge to quickly get the results, then he has mastered the art of being patient. Normally people mistakenly assume that being patient means to stop doing anything till the time is right. This is not true. According to experts in psychology, patience is an enormous power which guides a person to be on the vigil while waiting and then react at the right time, in the right manner. With this power a person always attains more success than others.
Professor Ramesh Sitharaman of Computer Science Department of University of Massachusetts, Amherst recently conducted a study to know the level of patience among younger generation today. His survey included over sixty lakh internet users. He found that these users could wait not more than two seconds for their downloads. According to another research study the reason for growing impatience among people is the ever increasing dependence on new technological gadgets. When people are not ready to spend enough time to solve their problems, negative emotions like anger and worry begin to hatch in their minds which result in wrong decisions and their lives get embroiled in negativity.
A Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Marketing of Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, has conducted a study to understand the importance of waiting. He has found that the tendency to wait, which manifests itself as patience, leads to highly desirable and better results in personal and professional lives. It helps in taking the right decisions both in thinking and in practical implementation. It increases resilience and improves interpersonal relationships. It helps save oneself from entering into unnecessary, stress generating situations and it helps strengthen positivity and self-confidence.
Adopting patience leads to a lot of benefits and this can be seen in the lives of people who have patience. Though this great quality comes naturally to some people from birth, it can also be learnt and cultivated. To do this we need to first identify the circumstances which create impatience. Then we need to study these situations thoroughly, and before taking decisions, we must first pay attention to our priorities. Also, we must maintain positivity in our thinking, and create this self-belief that if not today we will definitely accomplish what we want tomorrow. When in a difficult situation, if we feel that impatience is beginning to grip us, a quick way of escape is to start taking deep breaths, calming down the mind by focusing thoughts only on our breaths, and then try stopping ourselves from immediately reacting to the situation.
Patience is lost only when mind is nervous and anxious. Decisions taken in such a state of mind are incorrect because a disturbed and anxious mind does not have the capability of in-depth thinking and understanding. So it is necessary to calm down the mind first and take important decisions only with a composed and steady mind. A person can be patient only if he is far sighted and whose mind is calm, steady and creative. In a turbulent situation, only such a person can best use his ability to pause and wait, and attain his desired goal. So we all must learn this great virtue of patience.
Akhand Jyoti Magazine 2015 Mar-Apr