Patience
Patience is doing the work without demanding the result yet. The hard part is telling it from sloth, and knowing who's paying for the wait.
Short answer
Patience is suffering on purpose, and it usually looks like work, showing up every day without demanding the result yet, with an eye on the longer picture. Sloth can pass for it, since both show no results and no hurry, but in sloth nobody is watering anything. Patience also only counts when you're the one paying for it; Aristotle called it slavish to sit quietly while your friends take the insult. Neither test tells you whether the work is working yet, so you decide how long you're willing to be wrong.
Key takeaways
- —Patience is doing the work without demanding the result yet. The patient are usually busy.
- —Sloth passes for patience because both show no results and no hurry. The difference is whether anyone is still watering.
- —Patience only counts when you're the one paying for it. When someone else does the suffering, it isn't patience.
- —You can tell today whether anyone is still working and who's paying for the wait. You can't tell whether it's working, because a growing seed and a dead one look the same from above the dirt.
They tell you to be patient.
Wait your turn. Trust the process. Good things come to those who wait.
And so you wait...
But what are you actually waiting for?
Patience comes from the Latin pati. To suffer.
Patience is suffering on purpose.
Most people picture that suffering as sitting still, hands folded, eyes on the clock, waiting for something to show up.
That's not what patient people look like.
Watch one. They're working, every day, for a result that won't show up for months. They get a little better each time, and they don't quit just because the progress is too small to see.
What they're suffering is the gap between the work and the result. They can stand it because they're looking at the longer picture.
Patience is doing the work without demanding the result yet.
The old list of virtues set against the 7 deadly sins has patience on it, as the cure for wrath. Sloth is on the other side of that list, and it's the sin most likely to pass for patience.
From the outside, they look the same. No results yet. No hurry.
The difference is whether anyone is still watering.
A seed doesn't care how badly you want the tomato. You water it every day, and you let it take the time it takes.
Now wait on a person who isn't changing. Or for a 'right time' that never shows up. Nobody is watering anything. The only thing in the ground is a decision you haven't made.
That's sloth, wearing patience's name.
Even when something is growing, there's a second question...
Who's paying for the wait?
Give someone who's struggling more time, and maybe they grow into it. But if everyone around them is carrying the extra weight in the meantime, you aren't the one suffering.
They are. And nobody asked them.
Aristotle had a word for sitting quietly while your friends take the insult.
Slavish.
Patience is suffering on purpose. The suffering has to be yours.
So, 2 tests. Is anyone still watering? Who's paying for the wait?
You can answer both today.
What you can't answer today is whether it's working. A seed that's growing and a seed that's dead look exactly the same from above the dirt. Sometimes for weeks.
Keep watering. And decide, right now, how long you're willing to be wrong.
How long do you water a seed that hasn't come up?