It is said that patience is a virtue and, as with all virtues, when we forget about one of them, life has a way of making us aware and gives us lessons until we remember it.
Because I received this kind of lesson lately, I have given it some thought and I think that the reason for my lack of patience is due to my lack of practice.
Our world has changed a lot in the past decades and everything happens so fast that people are not used to waiting. Our habits are like muscles: if we exercise it, the habit becomes stronger if we don’t it becomes weaker. The world we live in does not give us the opportunity to practice patience and who would practice it without being pushed to do so?
Our everyday purpose (and I think you will agree with me) is to maximize our pleasure. We have been built like this and now we are all searching for happiness. Of course we all want to have happiness sooner than later so we do everything we can to obtain it fast. In the world we live in there are so many ways of obtaining this happiness fast that we are just not inflicted to wait for it. We can entertain ourselves in so many affordable ways that we just don’t see the point in searching for things that do not give pleasure immediately. The risk is that we may become so content with this kind of easy to obtain happiness, that we will stop searching for greater, but harder to obtain, source of happiness.
Another thing that the civilized world has brought, is the fact that our lives have become somehow predictable. And if the events in my life have been the way I wanted them for a longer period of time, I begin to think that I can control my life, and I begin to think that if I want something I will always get it (I only need to wish for it). And when I stumble upon something that I want and I cannot get fast, either I give up on it or I become frustrated and angry (or worse, anxious and depressed). But we need to remember that we cannot control our lives, no matter how hard we try, and that some of the things that have a big impact on us are out of our control.
I am wondering if this kind of message: “I want something results in I will get it” is passed from parents to children in the developed countries and I think it is most visible in the countries that have recently started this process. I have seen a lot of this in my country where parents that have lived poorly during the communist period, especially from the material point of view, try to protect their children from having the same restrained childhood. As a result, they spoil them by spending lots of money on what the children desire.
Each of us enters the adulthood with the lessons we have learned as children. If we know that in order to get something it’s enough to want it, we may have a big shock when we see that things are different as adults.
I am not saying that you should deprive your children of the joys of childhood, but more to teach them that there is a balance between pleasure and responsibility which we need to respect as adults.
Adults or children, we need to remember that good things take time and effort and we should not give up on our dreams just because we do not get the results fast.
They say that things come to us, not when we want them, but when we are ready for them, so be patient and, in the mean time, enjoy life as it is! Every phase in life deserves to be lived to the fullest – it will never come back.
