"Patience is not simply the ability to wait - it"s how we behave while we"re waiting."— Joyce Meyer
A Yoruba proverb says "oni suuru lon fun wara kiniun," meaning "only a patient person can milk a lioness."
Another one says "eni ba ma je oyin inu apata ko gbodo wo enu aake," meaning "whoever wants to crack honey out of a rock with an axe must not bother about the effect of the process on the axe." Oh! how I wish I could write all the proverbs about patience I was taught by my maternal grandmother when I was growing up, she was a rare advocate for patience, she believed nothing can be achieved in the world without it. She couldn"t stick two sets of people at least that I knew of: shameless and impatient people. Once you exhibit any form of impatience around her, she switches off immediately. How I wish we had more of her type in the world, and if you ever had the opportunity to hear her story, all you will see is patience all through.
I have since realized that there"s a lot to achieve in life through patience, and also there"s a limit to what you can achieve in life without patience, especially if you are building something really great, then you have to be patient to see your dream fulfilled in life. Many people have missed the mark because they weren"t patient enough, they overtook themselves in a race they had no opponent just because they weren"t patient enough to see they were running alone, all they needed to do was to be methodical in their approach, rather than run at a frightening speed to nowhere of significance.
The world is a very complex place and a lot of things happen in this world on a daily basis, babies are born, people die, projects are commissioned, people get married, homes are built, cars are bought, people graduate from colleges, some people harvest crops, new inventions are introduced and so many other things happening to millions of people simultaneously, and the mystery behind all of these happenings is they happen so quickly that makes one wonder if there was anyway one can solve a problem in this world without speed. To make matters worse, everywhere you go different people talk about the importance of speed, how nothing of worth happens without it and the need for one to embrace the practise as well because it appears nothing can be achieved without speed.
Yes! It is important to be smart, to be up and doing, to infuse speed into any action one takes, the speed of thought, the speed of making decisions are all required to be on top of issues generally in our complicated world but there is something that is even more important, something that is of greater significance, it is called CONTROL.
Control in this context is the ability to manage speed, lets approach this with the eye of a driver , if you are driving a car in the city, I am 100 percent sure you can"t move around at a speed of 60 km per hour all through, there are times you will need to wait at the zebra crossing for pedestrians to cross the road, at times you will have to wait at the traffic light, at times you will get stuck in the traffic, and you won"t be able to proceed till the car ahead of you moves, this beautiful ill.u.s.tration simply tells you all you have to know about patience in life.
Anytime you are tempted to keep staying on the fast lane, not wishing to slow down at all, always remember the story of the example of "driving a car within the city," as you can"t speed all the time while driving through the city, so it is you can"t speed all the time in the race of life, also as there are times you will be stuck in traffic and you won"t move for minutes till the car ahead of you moves while driving through the city, so it is that at times you will have to wait on the queue of life till the person ahead of you moves higher or leaves the stage for you to fill the void left, and also as it is that you have to wait at traffic lights till the light turns green, so also you will also have to wait at times in life for a go ahead by the Heavens or by people, to even drive the point home further, as it is required for you to slow down at T-junctions (underline the phrase "slow down") while driving your car through the city, so it is you have to slow down at times in life, you don"t necessarily have to stop all the time, in some cases you just have to slow down to avoid a crash altogether.
I am sure you can see that nothing describes PATIENCE more than this, it simply tells you it is completely erroneous to think one have to put one"s foot on the pedal all the time to achieve great things in life. That will be annamount to great.
Patience Produces Greatness
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No one can be great without making patience a virtue. There is a mystery about greatness that I have realised over time, anything that is quick to happen will often than not end up being ordinary. Over the years I have taken time to look at businessmen, professionals, politicians, the clergy, sportsmen, writers, artists etc. around me, in my country Nigeria and the world as a whole. There seems to be this longevity that is synonymous with the slow and steady but purposeful ones, they tend to be around forever rather than the ones who get to the stage with a big bang, exist for a while and fizzle away.
One major thing I have noticed about the ones that appear to be around for over 30 years and still expanding is patience. They kind of follow a process, there"s a trail of methodical and purposeful growth. They can be on a single project for 10 years, but you will notice a gradual process of development, they seem to take their time initially for years but it gets to a time that you will notice some sort of exponential growth, this is the time that anything they touch turns to diamond, it now appears they have mastered their craft so much that they do not need to tarry for any reason again on anything, they complete houses in a few months, they open outlets every other six months, they write books every other year, everything now happens speedily.
This is the real "mystery" of patience. It appears to hide you from public glare as you grow at your own pace without external influence or pressure. One thing patience does is to first teach you how to control your incessant urges for speed. It teaches you restraint. It guides you and helps you from making mistakes. It teaches you how to think with your head rather than your emotions. There"s a lot to learn in the place of patience.
That is why there is a difference between patience and cluelessness, please don"t confuse the two. A clueless person has no plans or aspirations, he or she only remains hopeful on a daily basis for a windfall from somewhere which never comes most times while a patient person has plans and vision, he or she only takes things one step at a time understanding that you can"t start a 100-meter race and finish in two seconds, at the same time. He or she knows fully well that there has to be an interval between the point you start and the finish line.
Also, a patient person knows that the time required to complete a 100-meter race is different from the time required to complete an 800-meter race. Finally, a patient person also knows that the stamina that is required of an athlete that competes in a 100-meter race is different from the one needed to compete in a race of 5,000 meters.
These are things impatient people don"t seem to understand, they want to start a race and finish it at the same time. So it is important to be patient, but it is even more important to do something meaningful while you are waiting, you must not miss the reason for patience, patience is LEARNING.