brief note about patience

                Don’t exasperate the willing. Don’t send a true lover into further and further proofs of her devotion. We who are so simple and trusting must tolerate much in those who forebear us. We must cheek their complaints. If we are instead so singular and austere, and demand the world of those who come to us in love, we must be as the eagle who flies high, but has superior eyes. We must know the situation, and take nothing on authority, and hearsay. We hush fools with a growl, have no patience whatsoever for nonsense. We must hold to our motive, and not let the conformity of love dissuade us. Impatience is a virtue for the proud, for the lonely, for the pure. For the guilty, the ensconced, for the situated, for the family, we should learn well from the allegory of Pandora – that boredom leads to every vice. Stupidity is hard to tempt.

                Isn’t patience a reaction to impatience, after all? That we feel we are patient when we are most tempted to be impatient, to be angry? Forbearance is feeling intense anger and holding back. A stupid man may be patient as water; lacking an imagination, an eager curiosity, a need for stimulation, he never glances out the window. He is like a man who never who enjoys a good drink, and so condemns drunkards for being the most miserable of fools. There is something especially evil in those who are not tempted as we are tempted, as if they were perverse on purpose, as if the crimes were obviously foul and only a demon would commit them.

                Just as a brazen confession can be used to hide a deeper crime, and a perpetual frankness can hide the most mazy of minds, so is a perpetual gesture towards one’s patience in fact a sign of intense impatience. Only the impatient remind us how patiently they must take us. The truly patient don’t really mind our nonsense at all, have a capacity to deal with us in all our intolerable individuality no matter what we do. This isn’t the patience of a saint, who is virtuous by bleeding, but the patience of a god, who is clever enough to make use of every situation, and has a use for everything, who has no need for patience because he is naturally so curious and creative. Every true God has something of the trickster in him. Only the impatient impress upon us how patiently they take us. A higher mind, the divine, is forever playful and enjoys us in all our nonsense.

 

 

\ ~@M@~ /

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