Is Patience A Virtue Or A Vice?

In the early days of the white man's expeditions in Africa, communities on their path reacted differently. The cheerful ones thought it wise to befriend seemingly superior strangers, as an added muscle and insurance against hostile neighbours.

That patience helped the white man to steadily learn what lay ahead of him and conquer the natives as far deep into the hinterland as he could. The same patience on the natives end proved costly when it became apparent, too little too late, that they had been dispossessed of their land and authority. That initial patience was rewarded with brute force.

In unrelated circumstances, inventors such as Thomas Edison, took time off to perfect or prove their innovations workable. Many in his time sacrificed family life and stayed 'married' to science. Earlier, Edison, when aged 3, was rejected by his school.

The letter handed to his mother explained that Edison had the equivalent of dyslexia today, and was, therefore, a misfit. But his mother 'read' the letter aloud instead telling the young Edison that because he was a genius, the school did not have teachers for kids such as him.

She homeschooled him and laid down the pathway to his scientific exploits. A mother turned an otherwise unteachable child into the towering genius that gifted us the light bulb.

Everyone needs that someone who says to you: "I believe in you" when the world turns off the lights on you.

So, I ask the question again, is patience a virtue or a vice?

From the impatience demonstrated by the school against Thomas Edison, we learn that that was painful but necessary to get Edison quickly started on his chosen path. Had the school been patient, they would have totally destroyed a budding talent by letting him drift along with no fitting support availed to him. It was the brutal truth anyway.

And from the brutal white man story, we learn of how selfishness and the illusions of false security against the might of neighbouring communities, could not yield dividends from dalliances with untested strangers. It ended up destroying them all in equal measure. The white man was on a mission that required him to divide and conquer the natives.

Therefore, let me rephrase the question. When is patience a virtue or a vice? Even more confusing when we ask: when is impatience a virtue or a vice? Certainly, the white man's patience was a vice dependent type.

There are moments in your life when you need an 'Edison's mum moment'. When an impatient world around you can only be remedied by just that someone who believes in you. When the world is brutally setting you up on your right path, it may, at that moment seem a vice meted out on you by a hostile world. But it is what it is, a virtue served cold. As unlikely as it appears, you don't fight the world's feedback, you embrace it, warts and all, and then find the perfect Edison type mother for your particular situation.

On the contrary, when rejected, dejected and ejected, you label those who are forthright with you as enemies and find solace in the truism that, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and where there is no enemy, your ego churns one out of the person that is brutally honest with you.

So, you take the white man's collaborator route and dalliance with untested strangers. Your impatience with honest people and your patience for real or self-created enemies of your new 'adversary', is a vice served hot, hence, a step in the wrong direction.

You must only take away the lessons of your enhanced self-awareness as illuminated on you even if delivered in unkind fashion, and never the style of brutal emphasis employed to get the message across.

And as you soak in the message, first suspend all your emotions so that the message is received, deciphered and well-understood, then, now slowly get your call-to-action plan well thought out. A fully processed message reveals the virtue in this well-meant ruthlessness.

Warm self-destructing collaborations by far outnumber virtuous rejections such as Edison's.

Vices practised to mimic principles can never yield virtuous results. But virtues practised to seemingly mimic 'vices' never lose the principles that anchor them, for their positive results reach full bloom and fruit to everyone's delight.

Impatience can therefore be a vice or virtue depending on the source's desired outcome. And likewise, patience can be a vice or virtue.

When a virtue is clothed as a vice, quickly search for your 'Edison's mum' type. These are the alliances to build for they will be with you for the long haul.

Those who seek solace in enemies of the enemy score short term victories but will still need to seek out the equivalent of Edison's mum somewhere down the road, for vices must be acknowledged and sanitised virtuously.

You must discern between being pushed out as a mother bird would to her chicks when it's time to leave the nest, or if you are just getting tossed around for put down's sake.

Let your patience or lack of it be anchored by principle and not a chassis-less harness, for you will get tipped over.