Impatiently Patient

My throat was very sore and the upcoming week was taxing at work where I need to speak a lot with a lot of people around. I had a sleepless night because of the discomfort.

So, I visited the doctor who checked me quickly and prescribed some medicines to treat the viral throat infection.

I asked him anxiously, “Will I be able to sleep tonight? Will these medicines relieve the soreness today?”

The doctor smiled gently and said something that also doubles up as a life advice. He said, “Mr. Vora, some troubles in life come quite unexpectedly but they take their own time to go. Just focus on the basics and things should be fine in a day or two.”

As I was driving back home, I thought about how impatient we tend to become when faced with adversity and messy situations. Patience is a silent virtue that seems difficult to practice in a world obsessed with speed, connection and noise. Everything happens in an instant, or so it seems.

But things that we build organically like health, finances, relationships, career etc. don’t work that way. They need time and effort to mature. That’s where we cannot take charge. We just need to endure, follow the route, persist patiently, trust the process and just do earnestly whatever is rightly required in the moment without worrying too much about the immediate outcomes or relief.

So in a way, we need to be impatiently patient. Impatient when it comes to doing the right thing at the right time for a right cause. But patient when it comes to our expectations of outcomes because effort and outcome may not always be linearly related.

The winding road to building anything remarkable, making an important change or recovering from adversity may be slow, long, hard and unnerving. The key is to not let the bumpy road drive you off the track or worst yet, bring you to a standstill.

Patience, especially in the face of adversity and external resistance can be the source of our hope and strength of our soul.

P.S: Thanks to Mike Taylor for featuring my sketchnote/post on “Three L’s from Self-Directed Learning: Insights from my first TEDx talk” in his latest round-up of Best in Learning, Design and Technology.