I have, at best, an uneasy alliance with patience. It's not like when I was much younger and had no time for it (ba-dum-tss!); these days I'm really willing to give it a chance. I wonder why that is. Patience has done me very few favours and yet all my life people have told me I needed to try to incorporate more of it into my repertoire.
Cultivating patience when it does not come naturally to you is like trying to keep a garden of African violets. Both are difficult (read 'well nigh impossible') and likely to wilt under anything but perfect conditions. Unfortunately, I'm no good at perfection either.
Though I rail against it, I have no question that patience is a good thing. A thing to which I aspire. But what are the benchmarks? Who are my role models? I don't know many patient people and I can't think of any useful examples of the exercise of patience. What exactly are the good things that come to those who wait?
In many studies, patience is linked to gratitude. At first glance, this does not seem like a great gift. But pause, think about it. Think about what waiting feels like and what gratitude feels like.
For some of us, waiting is a synonym for agony, advanced torture, one Damocles sword away from hysteria. We are the impatient ones. We want things now or sooner. When we can't have what we want, we rage or despair. Or worse, give in to a quiet smoldering.
Impatience gets under your skin. An addict needing a hit (no judgement, just an analogy). The frantic pacing, all-over body itching, a mental clawing towards the thing we think we need. Perhaps this is an extreme. Perhaps I am an extremely impatient person because I know this feeling intimately.
People who suffer from panic or anxiety disorders, as well as stress-related ones, know this feeling all too well. I can't believe they are alone. Some people feel like this while waiting for a broken arm to heal or a flu to run its course. Or to get exam results.
Gratitude comes, more likely than not, at the end. Or maybe it's what brings about the end. Gratitude feels like cool cotton sheets against a fevered body. Even when it is linked to other words like 'humbled' it still manages to feel beautiful.
It's possible we will be grateful because we got the thing we wanted: someone who was ill is better, someone we thought didn't care about us does, the exam results were better than we expected.
It is also possible that while waiting, we found we could be grateful for the things we already have. That, I believe, is the bigger picture conjured by the many studies mentioned. At some point, when the waiting-demons fell asleep, we saw that what we had was good and enough and already what we need.
In some studies - studies different from the earlier many-ones-mentioned - the thing being looked at is delayed gratification. Here, they are also testing your patience, but with a view to establishing things like how long you'll wait for food or money depending on the incentive to wait.
Mice, who, as we all know, we depend on almost exclusively to help us
