Patience is a Virtue

I have felt my nerves on edge the past few days or perhaps weeks.  I see myself react where I know reaction isn't really called for.  I find myself longing to unburden my complaints about certain people to others just to somehow pass the underlying feeling of annoyance and anger on, to send it out into the universe as so much population pollution but clear my hear of it.  So in sitting down to write today, I realized this is what I am truly struggling with right now and the posts of the past few weeks while touching on this, have not really in anyway mitigated a change in attitude or behavior.  It's like telling someone to lose 10 pounds.  They may know they should, they may even know how to do it, but this missing element is that moment where something clicks, where our knowledge synchronizes with our true desires and we take action.
In simple non-middot terms, I could identify what I was struggling with as a lack of patience.  This brought to mind the phrase, "patience is a virtue.", something I heard a lot growing up.  I am notorious among family members and coworkers for a lack of patience, wanting everything to happen quickly, with foresight and planning.  When others don't share my attention to timing and detail, I get frustrated and with frustration comes annoyance, and under annoyance is that unconscious seam of low-level anger.  We all know people who go through life in a state of near constant anger (Larry David?) although if you ask one of these people why they are so angry, they will deny that they are angry at all.  I definitely don't want to be one  of those people.
I made conscious effort not to complain about the parking situation when I got to a meeting yesterday, but then later shared with others a bit of it when walking out of the meeting.  I showed as much discipline with my speech as the Corner Bakery brownies on the conference table.   Still I saw it as a warning sign to me to be careful how I interpret a situation when during the meeting I pulled up the meeting info on my phone and saw detailed instructions on where to park and how to get to the conference room.  Other attendees had printed those and that got them into the parking lot, which I was not allowed to park in.  So perhaps some of the burden for the outcome was on me, and perhaps that was often the case.  It got me thinking about another episode from the prior Saturday.  I was all up in arms that I had sent an email detailing who would do what when for Sisterhood presentations and it seemed not to have been read or understood.  So I dug it out of the sent box this morning and re-read it and realized it was not as clear as I thought.  I used the word "we" in a way that could have added to confusion especially with a person who is easily confused.  This softened my reply when I answered a phone message, and in the end I realized it was another situation where I had to accept some of the responsibility for the outcome.   Maybe some of the anger comes from an innate drive I have to put blame elsewhere, something that years of therapy could probably be handy for making a dent in.  I do it on the tennis court, I do it with the kids and I definitely do this with my husband.  So I apologize, I am so so sorry.

According to Wikipedia, the concept of patience as a virtue comes from Psychomachia ("Contest of the Soul"), an epic poem written by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (c. AD 410) entailing the battle of good virtues and evil vices. The intense popularity of this work in the Middle Ages helped to spread the concept of holy virtue throughout Europe. Practicing these virtues is considered to protect one against temptation from the seven deadly sins, with each one having its counterpart.  So sort of like middot but perhaps more balanced and realistic, providing the yin and yang of each moment.  The vice which it encounters is "wrath".  The middot that connects to that is "slowness to anger", so you can get there in the end.  The text that is derived from is , "Be not quick to anger, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools!" (Ecclesiastes 7,9)"  How true!  Look at all those ridiculous, Republican hard liners, taking away the best of what has been accomplished for fairness and quality of life for the American people.  They are so angry at what they view as the "liberal" point of view they don't even think what is best for all of us, what makes a competitive country, a quality place to live.
It is an interesting overlap with Aurelius's poem, when the Rabbi's write, "Calm, persevering patience is generally a virtue, but especially so for Torah study, for anger causes errors in judgment and leads one to forget one's learning." (The Pirkei Avos Treasury, p.416).   For me the last phrase is key, I have let my inpatience lead me to misjudge or be to quick to judge in a situation, learning to see past this feeling, to double-check the facts and keep an open mind will hopefully help to be more patient and understanding and release that kernel of anger that keeps me feeling on edge instead of at peace with the world around me.  I can't promise it, but I can work on it.

"