patience

At beginning of the year I participated in an art workshop where we each chose a word for the year. Rather than creating specific resolutions we chose one word as our focus or inspiration for the year. The word I chose was patience.

Now, as we wade through the unknown and find ourselves ending every conversation with "let's wait and see," I'm wondering, what does it really mean to be patient? Is it simply a matter of waiting, of timing? Or is it an inner calmness you bring as you forge ahead anyways? Patience typically seems like a passive quality but I'm wondering how to practice it more dynamically, with greater energy and intention.

A large part of patience is accepting things as they are. As Swami Kriyananda says in his book Affirmations for Self-Healing:

Patience means also adjusting to whatever is in life, rather than wishing it were something else. ... For it is when we work with things as they are that we can change them to whatever we might like them to be.

We can't skip over the "working with things as they are" and go straight to "change them to whatever we might like them to be." Even if we'd really like to. Even if it seems that things must change right now. It doesn't work that way, not with projects and now with people.

So how do we bridge that gap between the current reality and the higher potential, whether in ourselves, in our relationships, in our classroom or in our world? We just stick with it. We don't give up. We keep holding that higher vision no matter what the current reality. We work with things as we are but we never lose hope. Patience is a trust in a longer rhythm, in a bigger picture, it's faith in the possibility of miracles and the inevitability of transformation.