Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can, always found in woman, never in a man
These oft quoted lines have been around since written in 1360 by William Langland 1332\1386.In his poem Piers Plowman he mentions Patience is a virtue.
The pace of our lives has speeded up considerably since then with mobile phones and instant news available 24 hours a day and it’s not as easy to be patient and stress free.
I must admit that I was never too great in the patience stakes. In house management would classify me as being a bit too impetuous.
My limited patience has been tested to the full during our recent renovations. I related our frustration during the painting job in a recent blog.
Now as we are finishing the job, we wanted a carpet taken up and refitted on the stairs. We called a fitter who comes , takes up the existing one and we were to give him a call and he would refit. And so, we did. I will be with ye tomorrow evening,he told us. We waited but there was no show, not even a phone call. We rang him again and he told us he is held up on a job. We continued in this vein for a week but eventually he did turn up at 6.00 o clock in the evening 7 days later. He was a great worker and did a super job, but the waiting game tested our patience to the full.
Now there is a bit of grouting to be done and a mirror delivered by another man. We waited 3 months [Covid 19 intervention]and no show .We take ourselves to the showrooms and meet said person who promised us he would ring us and come up the week afterwards . He forgot to tell us he was going on a 2 week’s holidays break. When he returned from holidays, he came to our house fully equipped for the grouting but without the mirror . Patience is a virtue to be endured at times. We collected the mirror ourselves.
Finally, on last Saturday we were to have two new pairs of curtains fitted but the fitter only brought one pair with him and had to send back to the shop for the others.
You would really need the patience of two Jobs when doing work like this and I’m afraid I do not have too many of Job’s attributes. I remember poor old Job with all his wealth and there he was rending his clothes off with frustration but yet he had sufficient patience to withstand the temptations of Satan. Bible study days in school with Fr. Mc McCarthy are recalled.
Parents ,when dealing with children might say I’m fast losing my patience with you, you’d better get that homework done or get your room tidied up or else.
Even very young people know how to test their parents to the limit by refusing to do some simple task. They will shout and roar until the parent finally loses patience .They give in and get them the bar or the ice pop or whatever they wanted and the parent has lost the battle.
I look at my thought for today booklet and I see Gandhi’s saying ”To lose patience is to lose the battle”.
I remember having a teacher teaching us honours Maths in 6th year. He would put an assignment on the board and often get no response . Then on a daily basis his response was “ God give me patience with you lot”, and for variety he could call on the saints with “ You’d need the patience of a saint to stay with you lot” I don’t think the good Lord endowed him with too much patience when he sent him on his mission on this earth.
Extending this out into politics I know that Margaret Thatcher was a very patient person in a peculiar way “I am an extraordinary patient person provided I get my own way’, she said.
I was a bit like that myself during my working career always looking for instant results and wanting every job done yesterday. A wee bit impatient you might say. My father noticed that tendency in me early in life and he was always telling me to slow down telling me that it was by patience and perseverance that the snail got to Jerusalem. My reply was always the same .I said that I was not a snail and I was not going to Jerusalem. Such responses were not well received generally.
As I advance in years, I think I am getting more patient and tolerant. I read books on mindfulness and try to live more in the present. I am trying to live out the material I read.
I realise it is somewhat of a futile exercise to be worrying excessively about the future .
Now is the time to realise the moment we are living in and enjoy it fully.
It is totally futile to lose patience with ourselves or others as we travel along the same ageing road.
I leave the final piece to Leo Tolstoy in “War and Peace”.
“Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait. There is nothing stronger than these two, patience and time. They will do it all.