Patience

Patience is a lost art. Paul Sweeney said it best, “How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixers, frozen dinners and instant cameras teach patience to its young?”

With the lost of patience, the problems seems to snowball. Degradation of common courtesy, increasing irritable nature and louder voice volume are just the tip of the iceberg. Etiquette especially seems to be slipping with raw behaviors scoring points of coolness and redefining the social norms. Is it that surprising that only a handful of ladies ever get praise from me because of their grace and elegance? And while I pride myself in trying to learn the ways of a gentleman, there are few I can actually take example from.

Of course, even if you possess patience, it does not equal to charm, courtesy or even general niceness. It however means that you will have a certain calmness to help you handle situations, accept new ideas and make changes. One must be careful not to get confused patience with efficiency. It is one thing to get the most out of your time and effort, it is another when the wait, which sometimes is necessary, becomes unbearable and trigger off a series of petulant symptoms.

So how do we develop patience? Force obviously has negative effects in this case. For me, it was strategic games like Weiqi that have helped cultivate some level of self-restraint and calmness. Believe me when I tell you that I am rather rash and it took me years of constant self restraint and reminders to become who I am today. I know I still have a long way to go with finding that balance.