“Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day.” - Rumi
March is a month marked by transitions, most notably the start of meteorological spring on March 1 and the vernal equinox on March 20th. It also marks the return of daylight savings time, which can be a delight for some but an annoying setback for early risers. March is known for extremes in the weather—a warm summerlike day can be followed by an overnight snowstorm—but we are inclined to accept these swings knowing that spring is around the corner. The changes that are characteristic of March, even though they are expected, can leave us feeling disoriented. They require us to reevaluate our expectations and adjust to changing circumstances. Although largely associated with the promise of renewal and rebirth, March is a time of transition that is best approached with an open mind, flexibility, and a good dose of patience.
Transitions can be hard, even when they lead to pleasurable experiences. Any change comes with a need to establish a new routine which typically involves a period of adjustment. Transitions that are anticipated and planned for are less stressful than those that are sudden or unexpected. How we handle change is reflected in the strength of certain behavioral and life skills, from self-control, resilience, and previous experience to the underappreciated quality of patience—described by some as the skill of knowing what you are waiting for while not clinging to the outcome.
In many spiritual traditions, patience is considered a sign of one’s moral character. From the Latin word patientia, meaning “to endure” and the Old French patere, “to suffer”, patience is the capacity for endurance and equanimity in the face of adversity, whether it be from a small provocation, a simple delay, or a tragic misfortune that causes considerable distress. Across spiritual traditions, patience is the necessary ingredient for other qualities such as hope, faith, and love. In Buddhism, the opposite of patience is aggression, which shows up as the desire to push against life and make it different from what it is. Patience is the antidote to the anger associated with aggression; it illuminates our own restless energy, bringing us face to face with the boredom, irritation, anger, and excitement felt when we want reality to be different from what it is. Far from a calm, passive state of acceptance or resignation, practicing patience takes courage, as it brings us in close proximity with the discomfort of our agitation and restlessness.
Patience is easy to grasp but difficult to master. It is frequently misunderstood as a form of waiting and when we lack a clear and decisive understanding of what we are waiting for, it quickly morphs into procrastination. In our achievement-oriented culture, we confuse the practice of patience with the ability to delay gratification--what is referred to in Buddhism as “imposter patience”. Delayed gratification is a type of strategic endurance in which we find ways to stay focused on desired outcomes in the face of obstacles encountered on the path to success. Patience, however, does not involve workarounds. Instead, it drops us directly in front of our obstacles, putting us in contact with our agitation and aggression, requiring us to face them head on. In Eastern traditions, it is referred to as being thrown into the fire—known as tapas—from which we emerge transformed. Whereas delaying gratification is all about control, patience is all about transformation. It forces us to slow down and see what is demanded of us, so that our actions reflect what is needed in the moment.
As noble a quality as patience may be, when it comes to navigating change, we place an oversized portion of our attention on our capacity to delay gratification rather than cultivating clarity and decisiveness. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the seminal 1972 study of delayed gratification and its connection to future success. Now referred to as “The Marshmallow Test”, it was developed by the Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel to examine the connection between impulse control and success later in life. In the experiment, each child was offered a marshmallow with one of two options: eat the treat right away or delay eating it for 15 minutes while the examiner leaves the room. If successful in resisting the temptation, the child received another marshmallow when the examiner returned. Mischel tested 90 children between 4 and 5 years old and then tracked their achievements for several years. He found that those who resisted eating the marshmallow were better at using cognitive skills to avoid succumbing to temptation. Follow up studies showed that these children went on to have higher SAT scores, had fewer behavioral problems throughout their development, and tended to be more successful in life.
The results of Mischel’s study were considered groundbreaking and set off a flurry of changes in educational and policy circles seeking to teach kids greater self-control. The intention was to shrink the achievement gap and offer everyone an equal shot at success in life. But Mischel’s findings were never intended to be a prescription for a happy life; the authors of the study listed a host of limitations in their research design, including the small sample size and that the children came from educated, wealthy households. Even Mischel himself thought it unwise to assume that a child who lacks self-control with marshmallows at age 4 is doomed to a life of low achievement and misery. Learning to navigate life is a long process that is influenced by a number of personal, cultural, and environmental factors, some of which are within our control and others that we cannot change.
In the years since Mischel’s results were published, focusing on one’s ability to delay gratification has seeped out of the classroom and found its way into programs oriented to promoting lifestyle changes in adults. Many behavioral change programs assume that restraint in the short term will lead to the development of new habits in the long term, even though a good deal of research since Mishel’s original study challenges such a conclusion. Recent research calls into question whether restraint is the most important factor in learning new habits. Evidence suggests that forces other than perseverance are at work when it comes to engaging in healthy behaviors; people who show the highest levels of restraint are more likely to be in environments with fewer temptations or more opportunities to engage in healthy behaviors. What we so frequently refer to as willpower isn’t as impactful as our egos may lead us to believe. What seems to matter most is one’s circumstances and surroundings; change a person’s environment to make health easier to access and you are more likely to see improvements in healthy behaviors.
Patience is a complex skill, requiring more resources than simply resisting temptation. Our need to exercise self-control is limited by a number of factors including context, circumstances, resources, and time commitment. Patience helps us navigate the complexity of the environment in which real world decisions are made. It goes beyond simply finding ways to control our impulses to address questions about how certain actions fit into the broader meaning of our lives. What in life is worth waiting for? What is required of me to make this change? How long will it take and what will I give up while pursuing it? Is it worth the effort? Patience gives us the clarity we need to decide whether a change is worthwhile, helping us to discern between goals that deserve our effort and those that are simply wayward temptations.
Keep in mind that patience has limits. One of its challenges is knowing how long we should sit with uncertainty. A sit and wait predator such as an owl needs patience to find its prey but will never eat if it waits too long. After a period of time with no results, it needs to know when to give up and forage someplace else. Patience is a delicate balancing act of knowing when it is time to wait and when it is time to cut our losses, change course, and find another path.
Although social media posts may tell us otherwise, well-being and health require a good deal of patience. Pharmaceuticals can take weeks to provide relief, improvements in eating habits may yield seemingly inconsequential changes on the scale, it may take weeks of exercise to notice fitness gains. It is patience, the quality of endurance and equanimity in the face of a challenge that helps us stay the course rather than abandon hope and respond in anger or frustration. It helps us find the middle ground between waiting too long and not waiting enough—knowing when to wait before eating the marshmallow or when indulging is the exact right thing to do.
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