Is patience truly a virtue? I have had a fair share of it the past couple weeks, more than I had in a long time. I actually use to chant that to myself when I was teaching myself to juggle soccer balls. Now, at 25, I’m questioning if having patience is making me a better person, or if the fact that I don’t is something I need to really work on.
What do I have patience for? The little that I do have, maybe for small temper tantrums my son will throw, or small arguments with my brothers about being nice to their nephew. As I’m reflecting on it, it seems to lean towards the other side of the spectrum of all the things I don’t have patience for. People with little responsibility as an adult, the customer who calls and yells at me, when they are the one in the wrong, long grocery lines, and arguments with my 19-month-old at 5 a.m. about why we can’t take the broom to the babysitters house. As well as when I have to click 600 times to open up a document on my computer, getting the loading sign, and continuing to click to get it open.
As a parent, I think I have grown to have more patience. Something that I have learned quite recently, during my sons exhaustion fits. The overwhelming screaming and crying that is un-soothable. It’s an awful feeling that you can’t help them stop the crying, but I didn’t feel as bad as I use to. I would sit at his door, just waiting, waiting for the crying to stop. Overwhelming waves of emotion, where I would just break down, probably cry a little myself. Now I think I have grown some patience for it, and know that this little man is tired, and there really is nothing more I can do for him.
Now when it comes to patience I should have, like most adults, we try to have patience at work. I work in a business where the phone is non-stop ringing, there is a lot of rush, just to wait. Customers yelling in my ear, when I have done nothing to them. That’s the trouble with customer service because no matter what, “the customer is always right.” Even when they are seriously, majorly wrong. I bite my tongue and move on with my day, but there is always that one customer that digs far enough under your skin you just want to hang up on them.
So back to my question, is patience truly a virtue? Does it make you a better person? And if you don’t have much of it does it make you any less of a better person? There are hundreds of techniques out there to manage your patience. The “count to ten “method only got my hot-headedness through ten seconds of patience. The breathing techniques, the thinking to yourself, you’re going to get through this ten to fifteen seconds of hell. Are you going to survive this grocery shopping trip with your toddler? There are tricks, like stopping for a milkshake to get half of your shopping done in piece. Are you going to hang up on that nasty customer or on your boyfriend when you’re having a fight? No, you’re going to take it, listen through it, or just hang up on your boyfriend... not the customer! Is screaming at the slow driver in front of me who’s had their turn signal on for two miles and still hasn’t turned yet going to get me anywhere? Probably not, but it feels pretty good.
My patience, I think it’s going to take me a long time to work on. I’ve been working on it for 25 years and I know adults twice my age who still don’t have it together. So patience may be a virtue, but it’s a virtue I haven’t exactly mastered yet.
