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. 

Respond 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 need patience. 

Our compassion has motivated us to take action. As Drs Krisitn 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 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 the how comfy the couch is and asks you to job for 60 second intervals with lots of 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.

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 bring in yin 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?” 

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 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 - decisions at a crossroad 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 tender, motivating 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 remind myself to find patience and trust the process. I repeat the exercise, letting go of the immediate outcome, trusting that the practice will 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?

Reference

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.