Love is patient, love is kind
Love is patient, love is kind (1 Corinthians, 13:4)
What does patience have to do with love (compassion?) Is patience a virtue? A personality trait? A practice?
Let’s dive in!
Quick reminder: compassion is a practice of attunement to a being’s suffering, and wishing them ease from suffering. It includes treating ourselves and others with loving-kindness and responding in the face of suffering.
Responding in the face of suffering - sounds great! Show me the problem, I’ll fix it! But it’s not always so simple…this is where we might need patience.
Our compassion has motivated us to take action. As Drs Kristin Neff and Chris Germer put it, this is a type of yang compassion. In their work, they describe:
Yang Compassion: motivating, protecting, providing. These are energized, active ways of responding
Yin Compassion: validating, soothing, comforting. These are still, tender ways of responding. (38)
We need a balance of yin and yang, and patience allows for yin. You might have heard the sayings “meet yourself where you are,” and “progress isn’t perfect” and “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” These sayings invite us to begin the change we desire where we are now, instead of jump ahead to our end goal.
A fantastic example of patient progress comes with the run training app, C25K (Couch to 5K). It’s right there in the title: “I want to run a 5k, and I’m starting on the couch.” Day 1 of the training program has no urgency. It’s not “Day 1: Run a 5K,” and it’s certainly not “Day 1: You think running a 5K is a nice idea? So why haven’t you done it already?” Day 1 remembers how comfy the couch is and asks you to jog for 60 second intervals with walking mixed in.
Patience is so hard! I’m con.stant.ly bringing myself back to patience. And while patience has kindness in it, it’s not just about warm fuzzy feelings. Goals set with patience are also more productive than those set with urgency. Patience allows us to set expectations that are reasonable, stopping before overwhelm paralyzes us. When we cultivate patience with ourselves and others, we have more chances to succeed more often so that we build momentum, a sense of capability, and have our change be more sustainable.
As Billy Joel writes, in his song “Vienna”
Slow down, you're doing fine
You can't be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight
Tonight...
Too bad but it's the life you lead
you're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong, you know
You can't always see when you're right. You're right
You've got your passion, you've got your pride
but don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?
Urgency would have us suddenly be someone or somewhere we are not. Urgency happens when we don’t have the distress tolerance to sit with our pain or imperfections with tenderness and can’t stand the version of ourselves that’s in this moment. It can be a result of shame/perfectionism (the opposite of compassion!) Again - our compassion has us aware and caring about pain points, then patience asks us to slowly, imperfectly work on changing what we can. We practice yin compassion to continue to validate and soothe the pain points that remain while we motivate and provide (yang) the changes we need. We try not to think “why haven’t you fixed this already?”
For some, the challenge isn’t urgency. Instead, it’s feeling stuck. A near enemy of patience (something that looks similar but actually undermines patience) is doing nothing. Doing nothing relies on waiting around for someone or something outside of you to change. This has its place, don’t get me wrong. But waiting around, as a primary tool for change, lacks yang compassion and - repeated over time - is dis-empowering and anxiety-inducing, because you’re depending on things that are outside of your control, instead of showing up for yourself and focusing on things that are in your control.
Real, sustainable change does not happen suddenly. Compassionate change allows for micro-adaptations (physically, relationally, financially, cognitively, emotionally, etc). We are always adapting. It’s a process we can come to trust - but it happens imperfectly, slowly - not in the timing we wish for, not in the ways we might expect, and not in a linear “straight line up” without slip-ups. We don’t look at a sapling and ask it to be a full-grown oak tree already. We know there will be years of fast growth and slow growth due to weather/soil conditions. We appreciate it, as it is, at every stage of growth.
Just as compassion is a daily practice - small decisions made at crossroads of judgment and non-judgment - so is patience. Continuing to notice those feelings or expectations of urgency or impatience in the face of suffering, and choosing motivating, tender patience.
These days, I’m practicing patience with myself during meditation. I notice a restless mind, notice how it can add stress to my experiences, and wish for greater skill to quiet my thoughts. But each time I sit to meditate, I must remind myself to find patience and trust the process. I repeat the exercise, attempting to let go of the immediate outcome in favor of trusting the practice to walk me towards where I wish to go.
Where are you struggling with patience these days? Where are you succeeding? How do those feel different?
References
Joel, B. (1977). Vienna [Song]. On The stranger. Columbia.
King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)
Neff, K., & Germer, C. (2018). The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
