by M J Ryan
I have two friends who say that breast cancer was the best thing that happened to them; one who says her husband leaving her was a blessing in disguise; another who claims losing her job was the greatest gift. Are these folks all masochists? No, these are ordinary folks, like that young dreamer, who realize that the trials they faced, as difficult, painful, and grueling as they were, have been the vehicles by which they have grown into more awake and aware human beings. “When I planted my pain in the field of patience,” wrote Kahlil Gibran, “it bore fruit of happiness.”
None of us wants to have to suffer through physical, emotional, or spiritual hardships. But when such trials do come—and they most likely will, for each life has its measure of sorrow—we have two choices: to rail endlessly against what is happening or to experience our feelings of sorrow, fear, and anger, then engage our patience and allow the challenge to grow our souls.
Norman Vincent Peale refers to this when he writes: “When pain strikes, we often ask the wrong questions, such as Why me? The right questions are, What can I learn from this? What can I do about it? What can I accomplish in spite of it?”
When we meet up with frustration and pain, we are being called to move to a higher level in ourselves, to discover untapped inner resources. At a workshop I cofacilitate, my colleague Dawna Markova, author of I Will Not Die an Unlived Life, leads people through a personal reflection on the wisdom they've gleaned through some difficulty they've faced. They are asked to bring to mind one resource that allowed them to get through those times. We've done this with hundreds of folks and everyone can identify at least one inner resource they've cultivated as a result of a hardship.
Just as there is no rainbow without the rain, you have developed beautiful soul characteristics as a consequence of circumstances that tried your patience. Take a moment right now to reflect on what they are. (For me, it is my capacity to understand other people's perspectives and my belief in fundamental human goodness.) These resources will be with you for the rest of your life. And when a new challenge comes to test your patience, you can ask yourself how you are being called on to grow and therefore find the hardship a bit easier to bear.
3
THE ATTITUDES OF PATIENCE
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his mind.
WILLIAM JAMES
WE ALL HAVE DEEPLY ingrained attitudes about life, some of them held below the level of our conscious awareness, that drive our responses to the people and circumstances we encounter. When those attitudes are ones that foster patience, we experience tolerance, acceptance, and serenity. If they are attitudes that foster impatience, then we have little stomach for life's challenges.
Luckily, as Sylvia Boorstein puts it, “We are free to choose our mind states.” We are not blindly at the mercy of our thoughts, but can make choices as to which attitudes to hold. This doesn't mean that we won't slip back into limiting beliefs, if we have them, for by now they are deep grooves in our brains. But each time we find that we have chosen a dead-end thought, we can begin again, reminding ourselves of the better options. After all, as Buddhist teacher Yvonne Rand reminds us, “An intention to cultivate patience is half the battle.”
I'M STILL LEARNING
Awareness releases reality to change you.
ANTHONY DE MELLO
I was feeling terrible. I had just yelled at my husband about money, although I had promised myself going into the conversation that I would not lose my patience. I felt like a failure, a fraud.
The feeling was so familiar. Every time I told myself I should be more patient and then I wasn't, I felt awful. I would beat myself up for blowing it. And then I would vow not to do it again and all would be well—until the next time. Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, the Impatient Ogre would rise up and lash out again. I would feel shame, take another vow, and the cycle would repeat itself.
I could have gone on this way until I gave up in despair, convinced I had no patience. Fortunately, however, I had help in the form of books and advice from friends. And that advice all had a common theme: what creates true change is becoming aware of what we are doing, without judging ourselves. Awareness allows us to learn. In other words, the way to cultivate more patience is to see ourselves as learners and each occasion of impatience as an opportunity to grow.
We're not always going to do it right. We're going to blow up at our mate, snap at our children, roll our eyes at a relative on the phone. We're going to honk our horn in frustration at the cars in front of us and make a federal case about a sock on the floor.
The question is not whether we lose our patience, but rather how we treat ourselves when we do. Do we berate ourselves for not being perfect? Or do we kindly acknowledge that we are still learning and wonder what we might learn from this?
Patience is enhanced by understanding why something is pushing our buttons, not by willpower. With willpower, we “try” to be good, but inevitably we fail, setting off shame, guilt—and no learning. In similar circumstances, we will do the same thing again.
When we see ourselves as learners, however, we acknowledge that something in the situation was hard for us, and we seek to understand what that is. With kindness toward ourselves, we open to the possibility of relating to a challenge differently next time.
The next time you find yourself losing it over something, try asking, I wonder what was hard for me about that? rather than thinking, I'm a bad person. Here are some thoughts about where to look. When we are impatient with someone, it might be because that person is allowing him- or herself something we don't permit ourselves to do. That was what was happening for a dad I know. His adult son was able to say no when he wanted to and Dad couldn't, so he lost his patience every time his son asserted himself.
Or perhaps the other person represents an aspect of ourselves that we've disowned. In psychological terms, this phenomenon is called projection. We get impatient with others who represent aspects of ourselves that we have pushed away or are angry we don't have.
When I look at my husband in this light, what I see is that I worry a lot about money and feel that Don should too. So I accused him of not acting responsibly when in fact he's very responsible. What made me see red was his peace of mind about money. What I really want is my own peace of mind regarding money and I was angry that he has it and I don't. This awareness doesn't mean that I never lose my cool around money issues, but I do it less now that I understand where my impatience is coming from.
There is a world of difference between feeling like a failure and feeling like you have something to learn. One leads to stuckness and despair, the other to possibility and growth. When your impatience buttons get pushed, try seeing it as an occasion to learn something about yourself. Ask, Why is this hard for me? You will be amazed at what such an attitude will produce.
PATIENCE IS A DECISION
If we love and cherish each other as much as we can while we can, I am sure love and compassion will triumph in the end.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Aung San Suu Kyi (her name means “a bright collection of strange victories”) is an international symbol of nonviolent resistance to oppression. The leader of Burma's National League for Democracy, she was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her “nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights,” a struggle the committee called “one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades.”
To me, Aung San Suu Kyi is a model of patience. For much of the past twenty years, she was under house arrest at her home in Rangoon. She did not see her children for more than ten years; her husband died abroad in 1999 without her saying goodbye. The government refused to issue him a visa and she was afraid that if she left the country, she would not be allowed back in. When the Burmese military killed more peaceful protesters at a rally than the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square, when the military tortured, killed, or imprisoned thousands of her followers, she spoke out forcefully for de
mocracy, but without hatred, bitterness, or vengefulness. She once said this about her captors: “We believe in talking to people, even those with whom we disagree. Actually it's more important to talk with people with whom we disagree, because it's precisely [with them that] we need to try to come to an understanding.”
What allowed her to keep her patience day in and day out? I wondered. She has a deep and abiding spiritual life, which grew in the times she was under lock and key. But in Letters from Burma, she provides another clue: she understands that patience is a decision that we choose to make, not once, but over and over. As her house was blockaded or unblockaded, as soldiers gathered outside her compound or issued new restrictions, as she now labors to bring democracy to the government as a free woman, she made a conscious decision to continue patiently on. “We carry on with our work,” she writes in one letter. In another: “‘Business as usual,’ we chanted and carried on with our work.” In yet another: “We go forward step by step, and we will keep on going forward step by step.” Letter after letter, the pattern becomes clear: whatever obstacles are placed in her path, she acknowledges them and then decides to patiently move forward.
Patience is not something we either have or don't. It's a decision we make, a choice we take, again and again. And the more we recognize patience as a decision, the more we are free to make it. We decide to be patient when losing weight and rather than trying to lose “fifty pounds in a month” (as an ad I recently saw promised), we work steadily toward that goal and increase the likelihood of long-term success. We choose patience when trying to get pregnant and end up two years later with the miracle baby, as my friend did recently.
When we see patience as a decision, we understand that we will be faced, hopefully not in as difficult circumstances as Aung San Suu Kyi, with the choice over and over again. Each time, we are free to choose patience—with our maddening boss, our quarrelsome siblings, our exasperating neighbor.
The beauty of the decision for patience is that it doesn't matter how impatient we consider ourselves to be. We will always have another opportunity to choose! In whatever circumstance we find ourselves right now, we are free to choose peaceableness.
Each and every day, moment by moment, the decision is yours.
THIS TOO SHALL PASS
Long is not forever.
GERMAN PROVERB
Khyentse Norbu was a young Tibetan monk when Bernardo Bertolucci went to India to film Little Buddha, about Prince Siddhartha, who went on to become the Buddha. As an extra in the movie, Khyentse Norbu got bitten by the filmmaking bug and five years later, his independent film, The Cup, about a group of young monks' obsession with the World Soccer Championships, was released to great acclaim. Overnight, Khyentse Norbu became somewhat of a celebrity.
I read an interview with him shortly after this life-changing event. He spoke about the Buddhist concept of impermanence, the fact that everything changes, that nothing stays the same forever. Non Buddhists think impermanence is a downer because it emphasizes loss, he said, but he sees it as positive as well. For without impermanence, he quipped, “I would fall into despair at the fact that I don't have a BMW. But impermanence means that my non BMW state may change at any moment!”
I laughed when I read that and his remark has stuck with me. For when it comes to practicing patience, it helps a lot to remember that things always change. Even if they don't change as quickly as we want or in the ways we would like, what we can count on is that they will change.
When we are experiencing impatience, we tend to concretize current reality: it's like this and it's going to be this way forever. I'm going to be in this job forever; I'm going to be changing diapers forever; I'm going to be struggling financially forever; I'm going to be alone forever; I'm going to be in this bed sick forever. If we're in an uncomfortable situation, small or large, it's pretty easy for the world to narrow down to just that unpleasantness and for us to despair of it ever being over.
When we remember that things always change, we can hold on more comfortably. That's why I smiled when I came across the German proverb above: long is not forever, it only feels that way.
It isn't just Buddhists and Germans who have this teaching, of course. It was Jesus Christ who said, “This too shall pass.” This profound truth is a great comfort when times are tough, for it gives us the strength and hope—and patience—to hang in there with what is.
THE SCREWS ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE WINGS
We can do no great things; only small things with great love.
MOTHER TERESA
Mother Teresa was once visiting a factory in India when she happened to notice a man in the corner, happily humming and assembling screws. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Making airplanes,” he replied. “Airplanes?” she inquired. “Yes,” he said, “because without these tiny screws the plane cannot fly.”
I love this story. It reminds me that when work feels like drudgery, it can help to remember our place in the overall scheme of things. This man understood the importance of his contribution, no matter how small, and therefore could patiently tackle his task.
So much of our lives at work can try our patience. Paying our dues, working our way through the system and up the ladder, handling bosses and coworkers. As a consultant to corporations massive and minute, I am always amazed at how resilient and positive people in organizational life are most of the time, despite the constant demands for increased productivity and doing more with less. Particularly in large companies, there seems to be almost perpetual restructuring—this year's new initiative that everyone must adopt, yet another reorganization of the way the entire business runs. While there may be grumbling and complaining, people generally roll up their sleeves and engage again. To do this, they must know they matter.
Fast Company once did a survey of the reasons why people stay with an organization. Money was reason number five. Number one was feeling valued. In order to be happy at work, we all need to feel we are contributing something of importance—to the bottom line, to promoting the goals of an organization, to a feeling of camaraderie. For each of us, how we wish to make a difference varies; what is similar is our longing to experience our value.
Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic writes of this in the book The Art of Possibility. There is, he says, in each of us “a universal desire to contribute to others, no matter how many barriers there are to its expression.” When we trust our ability to contribute and when we validate the contributions of others, we increase patience at work—our own and that of those around us.
While we can be validated by others, ultimately, we must make our own meaning, as the Indian factory worker did. We must discover where our deep purpose and the needs of the world come together. From this place, we can work steadily toward our goal—a streamlined process, a startling innovation, higher collected revenue, greater morale. No longer needing to see immediate results, we can be like Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel on his back for four long years. Or the workers at the World Trade Center, patiently shifting through millions of tons of rubble to find a wedding ring, a set of keys—anything that loved ones could have as a reminder of those who died.
Where are you needed? What is the value you bring? What masterpiece are you being called to create, one screw at a time?
WAITING IS PART OF BEING ALIVE
Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
In There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, Wayne Dyer writes about flying to Greece to run in a race. His plane was delayed in New York for eight hours, during which time most of his fellow travelers roamed about, grumbling and complaining. Except for one little old Greek lady in her eighties who sat the whole time in one spot, “as peaceful as could be . . . showing no signs of dismay.”
Once they boarded the plane, the woman was seated across from Wayne. “She smiled at me and then, believe it
or not, for the next thirteen hours . . . she never moved once. She didn't eat, drink, get up, watch a movie, complain, stir—nothing but sit in the same position as in the departure area, with the same contented look on her face.” When they finally landed in Greece, twenty-two hours after they began, she “was in an animated, high energy, joyful mood” as she greeted those waiting for her.
“To this day,” he writes, twenty years later, “whenever I am involved in a similar delay situation I recall that little Greek lady all dressed in black and remind myself of how to enter and remain in a mind field of peace.”
That lady in black knew something that many of us have forgotten—that much of life requires waiting and we have a choice to do it happily or miserably. It's a lesson I learned the hard way. I've had to travel a lot for work in the past, and I hate it. Traveling more than anything means waiting in line: to board the airport shuttle, to go through airport security, to board the plane, to get off the plane, to get a rental car . . .
Recently my husband asked me why I instantly see red at the prospect of waiting in line. The answer eluded me until I read David Baily Harned's book called Patience: How We Wait Upon the World. And there it was in black and white: one of the assumptions of our impatient age is that “waiting is not at the core and center of human life but somehow accidental: we should not have to wait. Human progress should mean our emanicipation from the necessity to wait, because science and technology have freed us from so many forms of dependence upon our natural environment.” That's right, I thought. Society should have worked out all kinks so that there's no waiting anytime, anywhere!