This picture about someone patiently fishing in mid-winter made me think deeply.
Paul begins his famous song about love with a negative part: if one lacks love, one is really empty, loud, nothing, without any advantage (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). He begins these verses with the remark: “Even if...” When he then lists a number of characteristics of love (love is....), he begins that list with the remark that love is patient. Love can wait, can linger, can bide its time, can say nothing, can relax. When one loves, one is a patient person.
It is quite a remark: to be patient, in our times, is often considered almost a vice. It is the go-getter, the impatient ones, the doers, the activists who do not want to wait and push things, who are regarded as the winners.
To wait, to remain idle, to do nothing, seems such a sin. To wait in a line, to wait for your turn, to have to spend valuable time to be served by a too busy person, seems to be a waste. It is bitter to think that you cannot get things done and simply go on with your life.
Of course it makes sense and is important to get things done and to get on with our lives and our work. We must catch a train, we need to be on time for an appointment, we need to study everything before the exam.
Sometimes we have no choice. We have to wait our turn, remain passive, have to accept what others need to do for us, without us challenging them questioning and abusing them.
It seems simply impossible to to learn not to be impatient as we move on with our lives.
It is difficult, because we do not like to “wait.” We are impatient because time is valuable and we have so much to do and so much to live. We say.
But sometimes, when we have the choice, our lives can be equally impatient and noisy. When we are with others, when we go on with our lives, our impatience still makes us talk a lot, listen less, criticize others when they do not comply to our standards, fail to understand reason and quick to judge when we our standards are not met.
So how do we respond from the perspective of spirituality to this tension in our lives?
We need to understand ourselves: Underlying our experience of life, there is a questionable attitude of “waiting,” of chasing tomorrow or the future. We challenge everything which prevents us from getting where we want to be or where we think we ought to be. Most of the times, the present moment is an “obstacle” to our getting where we really want to be. We experience our situation as a preliminary phase of what is to follow, what will be a better moment (which rarely happens!). We think of our present moment as “waiting” for what is to happen.
So we have to become patient. We must give up on “waiting” and learn how to live when we cannot move on, where we are not in control, where we need to allow other people space in our lives to be what they are and what they have to do. And we need to understand that our own lives is about much more than tomorrow, next week, next year or happy retirement. We need to find joy in our weekdays and weekends.
What we need is a different attitude to life. The present is not about waiting, but about living.
When we stand in a line, patience teaches us to transcend the obstacles. We need to be reconciled that this place is as important as where we think we ought to be. Now, in this time where we wait on others, we need to grow spiritually by seizing the moment, utilising this opportunity to be still, to simply accept where we are.
It is a time to be in life. And for this, we can practice a new lifestyle in many ways. Some people say they can sit on a sidewalk at a restaurant and spend hours looking at passers by, enjoying the many faces of people who share our space. It can also be a time to take out a book and read. It is a time to breath deeply. Or to feel the warmth of sunshine on our skin. Or to enjoy a cloud gliding past. Or to think about times past, or childhood pleasantries, or a first love, a first kiss. Or look at an old tree, surviving all the frantic activities of humanity with grace and beauty. Or a time to meditate, to think about ourselves, about loved ones, about God.
It is perhaps time that we learn to practice patience more seriously. We are ruining ourselves and our world and our relationship with God by chasing through life – always wanting to be where we are not now.
How sad that there is no place where we can be without feeling we want to be elsewhere. That is why there is so little love in our lives and why peace eludes us constantly. Love is found in the space called patience. For Paul, love was pre-eminently characterized by patience.
To be able to fish in the harshest and bleakest of conditions!
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