Patience is no virtue
Patience is not so much a virtue as it is a reward that comes to those in balance. Do not try to "be" patient, or to practice patience, or try to emulate those who are patient. It isn't a habit, or something to be learned for its own sake. Patience is no virtue; patience is a reward.
Patience is a state of balance that rises simply out of understanding; the unexpected gift experienced after a confluence of a sense of time, of struggle, of perspective, of judgment, of harnessing the mind.
Patience is not impossible in today's world, but it is not the norm for our time.
Lessons from long ago
Generations before us, grandparents were part of nearly every household. No longer able to work in the fields, they cared for the children around the house. Short of schooling, it was the grandparents relating recollections of their times that brought home to children that their own place in time was no different than, but offset from, that of their grandparents. As grandparents became more independent, that charge disappeared; so did the valuable lessons for children that put time into context.
Grandparents combined symbols of time, and the tool to teach it. Equally good symbols exist today, but the tools to teach it sit idle. For example, people need only sight down a strip of film, frame by frame, from the past, through the present, to the future, to demonstrate the point. Motion pictures encapsule the passage of time, but people remain mostly unconsciousness to it. In schools, history speaks of the past, but not of time or our place in it: Name the date of Paul Revere's ride; Give the seven reasons for the start of World War I.
Teachers seldom say, "Aren't you grateful to Thomas Edison for inventing the light bulb more than 100 years ago?" and then follow upon it asking students, "In another 100 years, what will people be grateful to you for?" That challenge helps to fix a sense of time, and your place in it.
A sense of time and one's place in it
Patience honors the passage of time. It honors the appreciation that, whatever is done during life, as close as you are to jumping into bed tonight and turning off the light, you will someday be just that close to your own death. It honors the sense that life is a string of todays; that to forget to relish each one, whatever it brings, is a missed opportunity to laugh, to love, to feel, to live. It honors that, as difficult as today may be, it is only one waypoint of the full complement the waypoints we are given to live.
Patience honors the struggle to live each day. That alone is what we are obliged to do: Live each day... and to manufacture from it for ourselves what joy we can find. That joy is easier when we resign ourselves to live each day for its own reward. When we have found that balance. Then comes the time for judgment. The world is open to us, unencumbered by what perviously we took to be important.
Harnessing the mind
Patience honors quieting the complexity of the mind, which otherwise is forever looping back on itself. Quieting the mind is a process of meditation that requires only the habit of recognizing what one is thinking about and then resolving, for a time, to put that thought aside -- a process repeated until calm rewards us.
Consider, also, that boredom is not the opposite of patience. Opposite boredom is engagement. Patience sets the environment where one can clearly decide how to be engaged; even to decide not to be patient. It lays a sound foundation from which to thoughtfully arrive at how to act.
Patience is its own reward
So sensible people don't practice patience as a virtue. They work to understand the sense of time, the struggle, the perspective, and the judgment. What results is patience. Patience is practice. Patience is the reward. Furthermore, patience is its own reward.
