The absence of patience is making the importance of its presence ever more clear. Impatience under pressure can lead to reckless actions that can exacerbate issues rather than calm them down. Like so many important things though, it’s easier to promote the idea of patience than it is to practice it, all the more so when we’re under extreme pressure. Commenting on the current state of the world, writer Wendell Berry says, "You can describe the predicament that we're in as an emergency," he says, "and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency." Whether we’re leading companies, countries, corner stores, or classrooms, it seems important, now more than ever, to pull patience, and ourselves in the process, back from the brink.
Language makes a difference ...
The language we use has a big influence on the way we think. More nuanced names for what a simplistic approach sees as the same thing encourages a meaningful increase in attention and awareness. As one example, Irish author Manchán Magan, who like Patience Gray lives in a remote rural setting, writes about 32 words for field in the Irish language—the list includes different words for, say, a field of corn-grass, a field for cattle at night, a field for games or dancing, a field with a fairy-dwelling, and 28 others. Perhaps, I started to see, we would do well to say the same for patience. Patience with people you work with; patience with relatives; patience with close friends and patience with people just met; patience with ourselves; patience with things way outside your influence, like the weather or world affairs; patience with delivery people not showing up; patience with learning a new skill; and patience with the inevitable reality of Natural Law #11 that it takes a lot longer to make something great happen than most people think. Thinking culinarily, there might be patience for making stock or patience for pounding (as Patience Gray liked to do) basil and pine nuts for pesto.
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