Patience and Dedication
by Vusuki
Welcome one and all.
I made an interesting connection between two concepts last week that I’d like to share with you. If you feel like it, I ask you to take a minute afterwards to reflect on this as well as then re-read it again to pick out what you strongly agree (or disagree) with.
The first of these concepts is ‘Patience’.
For me, the meaning of patience implied waiting… waiting for something exterior to happen. It’s implied being passive... that things aren’t in my hands to influence. It implied some kind of wisdom, to sit and know what you can’t do and let things happen at their own pace.
However. I’m not sure how it came to me, but suddenly I wondered how patience and the second concept, ‘Dedication’ were connected.
Dedication to me implies a strong commitment (generally to some standard or activity in some context). It implies being active but also consistent and that things are in my hands to influence. It implies pushing and moving forward in some way.
Now while it might seem obvious, it was a moment of clarity for me…
*I couldn’t have dedication (or be dedicated) without patience.*
But not the passive kind that I described earlier, but an active patience of continuing to push and to move forward, as if slowly pushing a boulder up a hill. If I haven’t the patience to continue, I’ll stop pushing, I’ll stop moving… and suddenly I may find the boulder starts to roll back down! Is it still within my control? Somehow I doubt it.
So dedication might require patience. It might require that part of patience that I described earlier, that wisdom of knowing what I can’t do and letting things happen at their own pace… but perhaps additionally realising that I am not separate from those things happening at their own pace. I have my own pace as well, and I can be patient too with that. There is a strange paradox in my mind between being patient and letting things happen, and actively participating and being dedicated. But these concepts need not be competing against one another or separate from one another just as I am not separate from the event before me.
Anyway, ‘Patience’ and ‘Dedication’. Perhaps they’re mutually arising?
Thanks for your time and I hope you can play with your own thoughts on this.
