The art of patience

According to Encarta dictionary patience can be defined as the ability to endure wait, delay or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties. By this definition, would most people describe themselves as patient? In this fast and changing world we find that most of us have no more time let alone to be patient so we prefer to always be easily agitated whenever time and things are not on our side. A great philosopher once said that patience is a virtue. One I believe gets tried and tested everyday and if we were judged according to our strength of patience, most people would definitely not make it very far. However, not all situations are self inflicted because why would someone get impatient? Every so often we find ourselves in very distressing situations where our patience is tried and as a result you have people looking uncomfortable and almost ready to fight. Take for example a situation where one is at a bank and to begin with the lines are so long you already lose hope. As if that’s not enough the teller does not seem to be even at the least bit bothered that her speed is the cause for your increased blood pressure; because you have other issues to attend to and not just occupying the space at the bank. The measure of someone’s patience depends on the gravity of the situation they are in. At this point in time, people are not concerned with the effects of their actions on others and hence we find very many impatient people all around. Walking in to a shop very interested in buying something and then you find the shop owner very unconcerned with your presence and when they finally attend to you, they take almost a century to get your order done and you leave the shop angry and frustrated while the shop owner is glowing because she has just cashed in. Looking at these situations, I believe that patience goes hand in hand with customer care. When customers are handled professionally no one would complain, and everyone would be calm. What this means is that as the world changes and continues to develop, many things are going to change with it. People have become somehow nonchalant and take everything in a stride not realizing that their philosophy does not always apply to everyone. So we the consumers of the world’s products in any way have to learn to accept what we cannot change and nurture the good seed of patience that dwells deep within us. Without this, we will not be able to survive in this increasingly impatient world. Yes we will be places that have the worst service and we will meet people who have no idea how to keep time, but we should not let this get the best of us. sannette87@yahoo.com