I'm not a patient person. Long lines? Nothing I want that badly. Long road? Find a detour or a place to rest. Long wait? Multitask and BBM. I once took the time to explained my unique situation to a friend: "Waiting in lines....it's just not my thing. Everyone has his 'thing' and for me, I don't like waiting." She responded, "No one likes waiting. People just do it because they have to." I was stunned. People accept waiting?
Joke's on me because patience is the most important virtue. The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. "The greatest of these is love," but I think that the underlying quality of all those virtues is patience. If I am patient, I can be kinder. If I am patient, I can love someone unlovable. If I am patient, I can find joy even in a difficult period.
Developing patience hurts. It means being patient with disappointment because I cannot understand the why when so close to the what. It means being patient with waiting my turn in a line ... or in life. It means curbing a bad habit of quitting if the results don't come quickly enough. Patience to let silence come and not fill it. Patience to reschedule another interview, and patience to write another thank you letter.
There's been a lot of recent chatter about the 1972 Marshmallow Test that demonstrated ...in four year olds...the significance of mastering delayed gratification. Conducted by Walter Mischel at Stanford University, a group of children were given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait (the most successful distracted themselves/the least successful fixated on the marshmallow) and others could not.
The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted, more dependable, and scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT.
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