When Patience Isn't a Virtue
In this week’s edition of Default Wisdom, we talk about having patience, accepting insincere invitations, hitting on cashiers, and how to get over your FWB.
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Is patience a virtue? Maybe not.
Hi Default Friend,
Do you have any wisdom on becoming more patient?
I find myself often emotionally shortchanging other people when really I should be a little kinder towards them.
To that end, do you think that patience is derived from expressing it for yourself first, and then hoping it exudes outwards to other people? Interested for your musings on it.
— Snippy
Hi Snippy,
When we talk about patience, we always understand it as a good thing. I’m not so sure that’s the right approach, though.
Tied up in patience is also setting healthy boundaries, and sometimes impatience is an expression of enforcing those boundaries.
I would start by asking yourself why and when you find yourself being impatient.
These might be moments when being patient doesn’t serve you. Kindness doesn’t always serve us, either. And I don’t mean this in a sort of solipsistic we-should-always-put-ourselves-first way.
There’s a difference between the discomfort you might feel while being patient with a friend who’s going through it and letting people take advantage of you.
When other people are asking for patience, they’re usually asking for something else, too: your time, your money, your emotional bandwidth. It’s up to you to suss out when they’re violating your boundary. Patience is finite, and that’s a feature, not a bug.
Sometimes, we’re impatient with others because we’re just emotionally spent. And it has more to do with us than what people are actually asking of us.
It happens when there’s something looming over us. Maybe it’s anxiety. Maybe it’s work. In that case, you might cut people more slack when you feel like you have that leeway yourself. The times I’ve been most impatient have been because I’ve been feeling something that takes up the space that empathy for others used to occupy.
In general though? I believe patience—the sweet spot, the kind of patience that’s not self destructive—is born from being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes.
Being able to step back and say, “I see where she’s coming from and why she’s acting that way. If this were me, this is what I would need.”
And from there, responding deliberately, maybe a bit more slowly than you’re used to.