a virtue called patience

In all the things we learn in life, one of the lessons we keep coming across is patience. Patience is related to time, as we know that not everything can get done instantly. We practice patience when we have to, though at the same time we want certain things to go by faster than they can and this is when we are being hasty or rather impatient.

In all the things we do, we learn and appreciate things. We learn to savor the things we yearn for and rush through the things we find as an annoyance. There are many proverbs which got to do with patience and its mostly about how virtuous it is.

I relate a the value of patience to calmness and the picture with a serene setting. By just thinking of patience,we physically express things slower and spend more time on these thoughts. Our mind works as such, that they work and calculate somethings to understand it and this process needs time. Some more than others.

Methods used from ancient times to think about stuff can be found to be all different types of meditation. The main reasons for carrying out a meditation is to get clarity of mind and thoughts. Meditation always involves a lot of patience to get the required results.

In day to day lives we come across lots of things which test our patience such as selfish people, taxi drivers, incompetent people and even evident lazy people. We get annoyed and act instinctively getting angry and upset. As Ive mentioned before, we can choose how to react when we can clearly decide what matters more to us, example: when a taxi happens to cut you off, instead of upsetting your mood and getting upset (doesn't change the fact that the taxi cut you off) you can choose to concentrate on other things that matter more.

Virtues are qualities which determine the quality of the lives we choose to live. Although there are many people in our world who don't have the same virtuous views in life, it does not mean we shouldn't. I feel that there is always a way and a reason for things that happen and as such, when we choose to be patient about things, we can learn to make the right choices, not only for ourselves but the people around us as well.

Ive read up on of the ways people meditate and found an interesting article on the art on bonsai which talks of how, while doing that, we learn to look at things differently and we would never look at certain things the same way. Eg. when we do bonsai, we learn to look at the details in the trees and look for the qualities in everything around us. We relate this to everything else, and even to the things people usually pay no extra heed to. In this same way we can learn to appreciate and look at things differently.

Practice patience and learn of things you do not know of.