Patience
I know you have always heard that patience is a virtue but the fact that a saying is popular does not mean it is accurate. Everyone knows I like oxymorons, contradictions and abstracts, so this piece is for everyone who likes to flip tables and see what could be underneath, for all of us who are tired of receiving the short end of the stick, for you who has become a little less virtuous because you lost patience. This piece will tell your own side of the story so cheers to being a little more rebellious. 🥂
You see, I am not the most patient person. If I had any fault, if there was something about my character that could be considered a flaw it would be my lack of patience. This character’s flaw is mostly because I am a decisive person, with me there’s no dilly dallying or sitting on the fence. I am an achiever, i aspire, i target and i get what put my mind to so i don’t understand people who are not like me, people who drag their feet, people who are indecisive, people who overthink and second guess everything, Until recently I couldn’t wrap my head around how unmotivated they seemed and a part of me thought it safer to distance myself from them. One day I had an epiphany and I decided to embark on this journey of become a better person in every area of my life, I wanted to live a full and quality life, that meant telling myself hard truth and one of those truths was that I didn’t extend enough grace to people who were different from me but on this my self discovery journey I also learnt that my lack of patience had saved me more times than I knew, It had helped me walk away from situations that didn’t benefit, It was self preserving even when I didn’t know it was.
You see, everything good has its bad side and vice versa and whilst lack of patience is never considered a good thing, i want us to do a careful deliberation of how it will benefit you to sometimes lack virtue.
Patience could look like simply waiting for God’s promises to come through but it is also backing it up with prayers, fasting, putting in the work and reminding God of those promises not because you are running out of patience but because faith without works is dead. It could look like trusting God through your waiting season but equipping yourself and building as you wait instead of sitting idly. Patience could look like hoping for that promotion at work but it is choosing to not leave all your eggs in one basket and looking for better opportunities. Patient is working very hard and hoping it pays off but it could also be choosing to work smart instead, It could look like being thankful for finally earning two times what you used to but still giving yourself room to dream about earning ten times more. You don’t know if and when it would happen but you are patient enough to indulge the possibility of it happening. It could look like forgiving that one person over and over again, extending grace and waiting for them to get their act right but it is also extending grace to yourself and deciding that you don’t deserve such inconsistency. It could look like being a fool for love, lost in the sweet words and butterflies in your belly so much that red flags start to look green, but patience is also listening to your intuitions, communicating your needs clearly, setting boundaries and being unafraid to say no and choosing instead to start over.
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Patience could look like praying for an open door but finally seeing that you can’t open a new door with old keys. With patience or lack of it. Something has to give. You don’t learn patience by being patient. You learn it by losing it. By being on the edge, by the near burst of emotion that is eventually suppressed, You learn it by losing control, you learn it by saying words you wish you could take back, you learn it by that cringe you feel when you remember that you went crazy for a moment, you learn it by regretting. You don’t know for sure that you are patient until you fully understand that your emotions may be valid but your reaction is not excusable. Patience is long temper and not absence of it.
You see my problem with patience? It has been packaged as a good thing but is it really? Is it always a good thing? How do you know when you have crossed from being patient to being stupid especially when you are dealing with humans. How do you know you are not deluding yourself by thinking your clients come back to you because you are the best at what you do and not because you are cheaper than others. You are happily thinking your exes come back to beg because they had an epiphany and realized that you are the best thing that happened to them but in reality you are just the one they can manipulate easily to accommodate their terrible vices. Why are you convinced that people rally round you because you are kind and not because they see you as someone who can be used. Maybe you are just a mugu but Patience is a virtue so we may never find out if it’s real or not.
Like you, I am shocked at the direction this piece has taken, I thought I was healed 😂
The moral of this gist? One day you will wake up to realize that you mistook patience for tolerance, a bigger realization is that you tolerated more excesses than you should have and you will shed the feel good mentality and see they didn’t come back to you because they realized you are a good person (they always knew that), they came back because they think you are the one who they will take advantage of because you will allow it. All I have said doesn’t change the fact that Patience is a beautiful thing, you have more to gain from being a patient person than being an impatient one. It is truly a virtue and one of life’s toughest lessons to learn.
The real moral of this gist? To lose patience is to lose a battle but in some cases you have to lose that battle to win a war, More often than not you will dodge a bullet because you lost patience. I’m going to end by saying this “The test of good manners is to be patient with the bad ones”. This means that you don’t know you are patient until you allow yourself to be tried, until you allow yourself to experience the hurt and pain. You can’t avoid people with bad manners but you don’t have to continually accommodate them.
Patience has its limits, take it too far and it becomes cowardice- George Jackson
