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Recently, I prayed for a miracle and since I am relatively new at this whole faith business, I have found having patience somewhat of a struggle. I looked up the definition of the word patient, and was a little shocked, annoyed, and amused that the root of the word comes from Latin word pati, which basically means to suffer.
Hilarious. For some reason, this is hilarious.
For my whole life, I have been walking around assuming that patience meant to be really good at waiting around for something we want without suffering over it.
Meanwhile, being impatient basically means we are unwilling to endure suffering. Impatience, in our culture, has such a negative connotation. The definition in Merriam-Webster makes that abundantly clear:
“restless or short of temper especially under irritation, delay, or opposition”
One of its synonyms is even listed as “intolerant.”
Put another way, it sounds like impatience is akin to saying to oneself, BLEEP THIS, I am not tolerating this suffering anymore.
I don’t know why this definition check is so important and useful, but it is. Patience seems like such an important, peaceful, saintly quality that all of us are striving for or struggling with. It turns out there’s a reason for that. It turns out that patience is essentially the ability to suffer long enough to get something we want and maybe, ideally, do it with some grace or class.
I have always thought patience was just a special quality some of us have, akin to not giving a BLEEP or compartmentalizing like crazy or staying calm or maybe even enjoying waiting.
But maybe the word is defined as such because suffering is built into the process of waiting for something we want, no matter who is doing the waiting. It turns out describing someone who has a lot of patience might be the same as saying “they are really good at suffering.”
Who knew?!
Well, I, for one, am not great at suffering. I mean, I am, because Lord knows I have put myself through an emotional buzz saw while operating without an ounce of faith more times than I care to mention. Living without faith, for me, was basically just about rushing life along from one confusing situation to another, trying to stop the suffering and making it ten times worse due to a fear, doubt, and confusion.
Fortunately, in the last two years, I have made a concerted effort in having faith in something bigger than myself, which I call Good and God interchangeably. It has been working for me, in myriad ways. The most significant change, which has come only recently, is I trust myself more now than ever before. I trust in my future. I trust in my past. I trust my choices. But I still struggle to trust in Good (or God). I still get confused by the signs and the path, but when I do, I know prayer and meditation are available to me to find clarity… eventually.
Since I’m pretty new at this, I know it will take time to trust in God (or Good). The fact that I even allow myself to call upon faith for support is a miracle unto itself. I will probably struggle with patience for a while longer, but for some reason it’s incredibly useful to know that it’s actually an exercise in suffering. The only difference is now I have the support of Good (or God) to call upon to help me through it.