How Long....?

Patience is a virtue they say...but at what point does virtue become vice? At what point does patience become lethargy and complacence?

It is all very easy to say that good things come to those who wait but don t those who wait too much also get stale stuff that’s crossed its use-by date? When I was younger, I did training programs where between “flight or fight” I stood for “fight”... stay back, fight it out, wait for things to turn, “shraddha and saburi”, patience and faith, were the two things you had to have. Struggle to make things work, always argued that “flight” was the easy option and that’s also what I heard many other so-called gurus propound. Everyone said that fleeing out of a situation was easy, staying back to make it work was the tougher of the two. To stay in, reflect, learn, adapt were the signs of a mature response to unpleasant circumstances. That you had the power to change the situation. And my naive mind believed it, because so far I hadn’t really had to fly out of that unbearable a situation. My young blood believed that everything ultimately works out and that fleeing was for cowards. Only now I realise, that staying in and trying to fight is actually easier but exhausting over a period.

Optimism can be great but beware of it also blinding you to bitter reality. Staying in and hoping for things to change, believing you are being patient may be the more cowardly action. It does not have to experience the pain of separation, the trauma of tearing away from things and people familiar to you. The fear of the unknown that awaits you can be daunting and it requires a lot, a lot of courage to take that step to take flight out of an unpleasant situation. Staying in only requires resilience, an almost mule-like attitude, a thick skin and an ear that’s hard of hearing :) But flying out requires strength of wings, confidence and ability to go it alone, the willingness to move away from a life you have known and the risk of moving into a new unknown space.

one argues saying stay in, and do the thinking, learning, adapting and that’s all good to say only I realise that all this happens at the early stages of the wait...after a while one just gets acclimatized to the environment and then the need to think, learn etc slowly dies out and one settles into an uncomfortable comfort of the familiar, painful but familiar. Even the pain is familiar and that is comforting. Going on about analysis, intellectualization and hoping that all will soon be well makes one inert and there is a fear that years will pass without awareness of the clock ticking.

taking flight may not be what’s commonly advocated, but needs equal consideration at some time because when something starts to cause more pain that pleasure and the effort of trying saps out one’s energy, it is time to boldly and courageously stop thinking and trying and simply take flight...situations can never be fully analyzed and what could have been done and what wasn’t will never be a topic that has completed discussion. So at times, its time not for patience but for action....unless you want to have over ripe, rancid, stale stuff doled out to you.