The Value of Patience

Patience, which can be considered both a strength and a virtue, is seemingly in short supply in a self-centered, technology-ruled, doorstep-delivered world, but can have longer-term value if understood and practiced. Ironically, it takes that very aspect to discover why.

“We live in a society of instant gratification—instant coffee, instant breakfast, and instant money from our local ready bank machines—it’s everywhere we look,” according to Al-Anon’s Courage to Changetext (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992, p. 1).

It particularly applies to those who have been affected in body, mind, and soul by exposure to alcoholism or para-alcoholism during their upbringings and enter one or more twelve-step recovery programs, expecting to turn around two decades of adversity after a few meetings.

“No wonder so many of us arrive at Al-Anon’s doors, looking for the instant answer to all the problems that come from living with and loving an alcoholic,” Courage to Change continues (ibid, p. 1).

Recovery requires willingness, memory-probing, introspection, self-examination, courage to face a traumatic past, confronting demons, re-experiencing physical and emotional pain, adopting new perspectives, and changing well-worn, almost-automatic behaviors. Threads that have intertwined to create a tight tangle in a person’s past must be identified, traced to their origins, re-seen in a new light, reinterpreted, desensitized, and taken to a point of extinction in his present. Perspectives must be changed. And new coping mechanisms must be substituted for the maladaptive ones that may have been necessary as a child, but no longer work as an adult. This process, needless to say, takes patience.

“Recovery is a process,” Courage to Change points out (ibid, p. 1). “It takes time to regain, reclaim, and recoup all that was lost while we tried on our own to cope with active drinking. Building trust takes time: there are no immediate, ready-made solutions.”

Patience is not only valuable for those in recovery. It is equally instrumental in everyday life. But it may take some degree of understanding before it is viewed in this light.

Instant gratification opposes it, as if each engaged in a tug-of-war with the other. Impatience allows emotions and sometimes even irrationality to take the reins. It creates frustration that causes a person to take drastic actions which can create negative consequences. It creates its own urgency and, if left unchecked, can be elevated to an unrealistic emergency.

Part of a person’s reluctance to practice patience is his misunderstanding of its nature. It can be viewed as procrastination, inaction, passivity, and even weakness. It may imply acceptance, surrender, or the inability to achieve the desired goal or effect.

But the reality is that it can become an integral part of optimistic expectation. If a goal or desire is put in the hands of a Higher Power or a God of the person’s understanding, it may take Him time to bring together the right people and/or circumstances to deliver it, since He seeks to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and not just for the person who prays for his wish. Believing that it will be, requires acceptance and action as if it already has been, not just that it can be, and avoiding the erroneous conclusion that an inactive interval signifies failure.

Patience necessitates a long-term view, not a short-term one. It requires practice, a new mindset, and emotional control, and becomes easier over time. Ironically, delayed gratification may minimize or eliminate the need or circumstance that sparked the desire in the first place and can prompt a reassessment of its urgency, purpose, or worth.

In an imperfect, impermanent world paved with uncertainties and disappointments, it may be a vital tool to use to negotiate it and tolerate it.

In the end, patience, like the soul, is a state of being and is integral to knowing a person’s Creator as he awaits his return to Him after his earthly existence.

“We all have dark times in our lives, but the journey to better ones is often what makes us happier, stronger people,” Courage to Change concludes (ibid, p. 1). “When we stop expecting instant gratification, we may come to believe that where we are today is exactly where our Higher Power would have us be.”

Robert G. Waldvogel has earned the Interdisciplinary Certificate in Behavioral Health for Late Adolescence and the Emerging Adult and a Postgraduate Certificate in the Fundamentals of Cognitive Behavioral Treatment at Adelphi University’s School of Social Work. He has led Twelve-Step support groups on Long Island for more than a decade, and created the Adult Child Recovery-through-Writing, and the Strengthening Our Spirituality Programs taught at the Thrive Recovery Community and Outreach Center in Westbury. He is a frequent contributor to Wisdom Magazine.