Cultivating Patience
Be patient. This too shall pass. We've most likely heard these words many times during the past couple of months. For most of us, our patience has been put to the test and will most likely continue to be put to the test for the foreseeable future. We are getting anxious to get back to the freedoms we enjoyed in our pre-pandemic lives. We may be feeling anxious to get back to our offices; to get our hair cut or go shopping at our favorite stores; to get back to our gyms and yoga studios. We may feel anxious to see our children go back to the classroom, and perhaps most of all, anxious to see and hug our friends and loved ones that we have been separated from. We’ve been practicing patience. And we are being asked to keep doing so.
The dictionary defines patience as “the bearing of provocation without complaint or irritation” and as “a quiet, steady perseverance” For me, practicing patience means being present in each moment. It means not anticipating what is coming next; not rushing to get to the next thing. Patience is not something that comes naturally to me (just ask my young adult children!), and I think this is one of the reasons I was so drawn to yoga many years ago, and why my yoga practice continues to be so important to me. Cultivating patience is so much of what our yoga practice consistently teaches us. Our yoga practice teaches us to stay connected to the present. To trust in each moment. To trust in ourselves. And to be gentle and patient with ourselves. Being patience with ourselves means practicing self compassion; meeting ourselves where we are in each moment. When we practice self compassion, we create space for patience to surface.
My life is considerably less busy these days, as my business mostly came to a halt mid-March. I have embraced this time without schedules and deadlines and multi-tasking as an opportunity to really practice being present. Instead of drinking my coffee while hurriedly getting ready for work and mindlessly eating lunch at my desk, I am now savoring my morning coffee as well as my afternoon tea (a new ritual!). When we are rushing to get to the next thing, we are not being fully present, and we are missing out on that part of lives. When we are continually anticipating what is coming next, we are creating the feeling of impatience. And that feeling of impatience is an invitation to us to come back to the present moment. I have had the opportunity to observe that when I am living in the present moment, I have an abundance of patience with life, and with myself and others.
The problem with the sentiment "this too shall pass" is that it implies that we are in a waiting mode, wishing away this present moment, anticipating a time when we believe life will be better. We are missing out on the present. The present moment is all we have. All of the moments count. The quiet moments. The boring moments. The scary moments. The sad moments. The joyful ones. Each moment gets us to the next moment and is an important step in our journey.