Recently I have come to the conclusion that patience is an important cornerstone of a happy life. While reminiscing over my life in the last 40 years I can only notice how pivotal moments could have gone a whole other way if I hadn’t been patient.
Happiness is always fleeting so I’m not saying that this is THE way to become happy but I have been relatively happy over the whole span of my life and, according to me, the main reason for this is patience.
Patience at the pier #
I remember being 19 years old and having one of my first holidays without parental supervision. We were staying in an appartment at the sea with a bunch of friends. Being the introvert I am, I got tired of all the noise surrounding me after a couple of days so I went to take a walk. I stumbled upon a pier and decided to walk over it. I noticed that there were stairs to the side but that they went into the sea. As I stood there I remember thinking: there should be a moment where I can take those stairs to the beach instead of in the sea.
After a couple of hours I was able to take the stairs to the beach. Now that I look back I discover that was my young self practicing to be patient. I’m not saying that I knew the value of patience at that age but for one reason or another I was practicing the muscle to be calm and content while you wait for something which will happen but you’re unsure when (aka patience).
Keep practicing #
I have also noticed myself becoming more patient throughout the years (although older people do tend to be very impatient…) so maybe I’m fond of patience. Whenever I take public transport I’m (almost) always patient and ok with delays that pop up. You don’t know when you’ll get there but you’ll get there (or at least that’s the case in Belgium).
While thinking back on my professional career I now see that my patience has helped me to get to places where I would never have gotten without patience. It’s patience that allowed me to discover how companies worked and how I’m able to add the greatest value to that company. It’s patience that allows me to look back at my time as good and necessary time to discover that, in the end, I was not where I needed to be. If I wouldn’t have been patient I would have run away and would have never known if it was the right path or not.
In my personal life I have also benefited from patience, throughout the years it has enabled me to discover who we (me and my wife) are and how we can be happy. It’s given me the time to enable our financial investments to mature to be able to profit from them as well.
Patience in our society #
While writing this at the airport I’m seeing so many people being impatient, tapping on their phones, trying to be the first on the plane, getting up while the plane is still taxiing, … . I’m left wondering if patience is something we’re losing in our society. I’m convinced we’re pushing our society to be ever more impatient through technological and other innovations and that, through that evolution, we’re losing an important part of a good society.
It’ll take patience to see how everything will pan out.