The Reward for Patience
This week has been quite a struggle with tiredness and allergies. It's amazing how the body reacts with a natural histamine response that throws everything off – all this week, my appetite, digestion, and sleep are all out of sync, and my energy feels incredibly sluggish. “I flow like molasses,” I thought, trying to joke my way through it to no avail. While I took a day of rest intending to feel better, the next day everyday responsibilities waited for me, and I entered the busyness. Though I did my best, I felt exhausted after only a few brief periods of work and exercise.
Dealing with allergies, I felt impatient and thought: “This is starting to go on too long now.”
I had to pause and consider what these allergies might be teaching me. Through all the congestion and discomfort today, I felt a brain fog clouding over my mind, and my body felt hobbled all week. Meanwhile, the dishes were piling up, the floor needing sweeping, and I had work obligations to meet, and all I felt ready for was lying down and sleeping. The symptoms were relentless – the itchiness, the persistent runny nose and congestion, watery eyes, and even moments of eye pain and disorientation. I felt my body was a battleground, and my attention was held hostage by all of this.
This week of allergies and tiredness has truly been an exercise in patience. My nose is quite painful from the frequent tissue use over the last few days. It is such a small spot on my face, but it is a persistent and painful irritation that adds up and is hard to ignore. Paying so much attention to my nose and my breathing is part of the exhaustion that goes with allergies. Grass pollen counts are high, and there is not much I can do about the pollen. Then, this week, on top of all that, I have also lost my wedding ring in the house again. I take off my ring to do chores sometimes. One time my ring went missing for three weeks until I found it hiding in the closet where we keep the sheets and towels. I have looked everywhere for the ring this time around, including that closet, and there is nothing. Maybe it will turn up again soon, or so I kept thinking throughout this week. I really couldn’t think of too many other things besides allergies. (Update: I have since found my ring in the washing machine after it was lost for six days!)
Arghhh! My frustration was front and center.
During meditation today, between dabbing my nose and sneezing and trying to be present with it all, a quiet message came to me as I stared out into space. Suddenly, in just a few seconds as I sat there in my favorite spot in the house, two small baby tears made their little way out of the corner of each eye.
It is not like I heard a voice. The message that came to me was a series of what felt like angelic thoughts that appeared in my mind all at once. Past conversations and memories of things I had heard or read about patience came to me like a fine mist of soothing rain falling all around me. So, here are the thoughts that came:
Have patience in both the ordinary and extraordinary moments, dear heart.
Patience with this body – it sneezes, drips, smells, hurts, and it needs rest, exercise, and care in the form of good food, bathing, soft textures and surfaces, and restful sleep. This body in pain, no matter how small, needs patience above everything else.
Patience with this mind – it worries, wanders, gets confused and loses patience with itself and with ordinary objects and with people. Just patiently observe this mind.
Patience with natural unfolding processes. Remember that things take time, communication can be imperfect, and timing is a skill not everyone has mastered. Everyone is battling, uncomfortable and falling apart, including nations, at any given moment. You are not being singled out or punished. You are living and very much alive dealing with allergies and irritation and pain.
Patience with life itself and patience with self and with others. Existence just happens for its magnificent and complicated reasons. We are carried along. This is not meant to comfort you as much as it is meant to wake you up to the human condition. Humans and creatures are moving and having their being within a great rhythm that itself evolves and shifts and changes in the great play of energies and Qi. Life finds a way and is the way. There’s a sense that things unfold exactly according to plan — and it is also true that random elements show up and random events happen. Throughout time and history, the random flukes and “black swans” have appeared, and great changes have taken place. Adaptation, healing, and renewal are part of this existence.
This! Sit or stand in the middle of all — this.
Recognize yourself as a player moving in the Great Game of existence. Your feelings and thoughts, your actions, and your very soul, all matter and contribute to what happens in existence.
Yes, yes, I thought.
Filled with awe, my heart was finally able to rest even as my nose kept right on dripping and aching.
Years ago, when I lived in San Francisco, trying to find my way as a young person fresh out of college, my friend George Angel (who is now a published author: yay, George) and I would talk about books and serious themes in great literature, as well as goofy and interesting literary things: how Kafka often looks like a bat in his portraits, or how Hemingway’s sentences are often tight short stories in and of themselves. Once George shared a thought from St. Augustine: the reward for patience is more patience. At first, this seemed to me a cynical thought: the reward for patience is what? Absolutely nothing?! But when you think about it, St. Augustine’s statement is true, because patience is something you practice with small things and big things alike.
You get better at having patience with practice.
Saints and sages through the ages have suggested that patience is essential for overcoming adversity, especially when the path forward is not clear. You learn to pause and rest in your patience, as if your patience were a magnificent being, a big mythical Dragon flying just above life with a great perspective and willing to see life clearly and purely no matter what it is happening.
St. Augustine also said that the the heart is restless until it rests.
And when the heart is restless, it cannot find comfort anywhere. There’s just more longing, more wanting, and more suffering. In such moments, when we feel alone and unworthy, tired, scared, hurt, angry or betrayed, the heart may cry out in extreme anguish. That moment of anguish can also be a moment of seeing and being — when we witness our own suffering and just see it clearly in all its complexity, misery, and even recognize its exquisite beauty. Such a fleeting but powerful moment can be the moment a tiny speck of patience appears in the field of awareness. That’s the moment when a tiny voice inside (your better angels) may quietly whisper little encouragements only you can hear:
Hang in there.
You can be here in this messy painful moment, too.
Breathe.
You're going to be okay.
Cultivating patience is a strategy for meeting what is. Even the smallest amount of patience you can come up with in the moment is a quiet strength that can hold your suffering. Don’t beg for patience, though. Ask for it directly. Summon patience as if it were a trusted ally. Patience comes from the very depth of your being.
What you have patience for reveals your character, your true nature, your resilience, and the miracle of your spirit shining through your life and being. Patience is always dawning, always ready to be taken up like a staff that you can lean on. It makes sense that patience is considered a virtue, perhaps even the foundation of all virtues, in spiritual practice. I believe demonstrating virtues is fundamental to the continuation of humanity as a species. It is how we each do our part and maximize the chances of getting along with one another in peace. Imagine humanity being patient with itself as it figures things out. The wisdom of such patience gets passed down through the ages and becomes part of the collective well-being through time and history. Humans evolved this way for a reason. Patience is a super power. Practicing patience, then, feels like connecting with the enduring goodness of life. Each time we are patient with ourselves or with one another (or with life itself), we create health and well-being.
So: Focus on patience today, have patience, be patient, and get rewarded with more patience.
May the restless heart rest at last. 💙