What is it about patience that links it with virtue?
When building relationships of value that take time to come together, or working on something incrementally that needs progressive development - yes in those cases - patience is a virtue. To rush the process would cheapen it.
What about patience links it with weakness?
When patience is laziness in disguise. When patience is fear of progress, fear of speaking up, fear of creating change.
Sometimes doing "the right thing" for too long is the wrong thing. Sometimes holding onto a way of doing life or business or relationship or health that is "safe" is actually blocking desired progress.
Calm evaluation of areas where patience has become complacency reveals what can now change for the better. Is there a way to incrementally ratchet that area into motion with tactful urgency?
What will happen?
"Tactful urgency" - great phrase. I don't know that there's an easy way to trigger this, but I like the idea.
ReplyDeleteIn a shamanic tradition I practiced for 10 years, they spoke about personality traits and their light & dark sides.
Seek to embody:
Patience without complacency (become a blob)
Sweetness without foolishness (become a victim)
Ruthlessness without viciousness (become a tyrant)
Cunning without cruelty (become a manipulator)
Taken altogether, there's a way I surmise that it is - as with most things - a combination of awareness and then determination that allows us to move into the more productive side of any of these.