How can patience be present if in waiting for an action or event, we find ways to fill our time with methods to remove ourselves from the realization that what we are waiting for has not yet come? If patience only went so far, it would be quite a cowardly attribute, if anything. Patience wouldn’t have the medicinal components to bring forth human flourishing, but would suppress it in a drug-like stupor, encouraging pursuit of a new and more engaging stimulus. Well, that’s neither here nor there, as whatever wants to erroneously call itself patience is infinitely more numerous than what is truly patience.
Though I really don’t like using the mechanical word “efficiency” here, I believe there is something to which it hints. There is self-refinement that goes along with patience, as with all of the virtues, which, by definition of theologian N. T. Wright, involve the thousand tiny decisions made prior, so that when a situation arises, the correct outcome will be realized.
With patience, we’re not removing ourselves from what is to come. We are, instead, anxiously waiting, and preparing ourselves to better do so. This can take form in different ways. For example, a runner exercises patience in dealing with an approaching marathon by taking the proper methods of preparation in diet and exercise. In contrast, the impatient runner may squander his time by neglecting the race entirely until two days prior, when he ruins himself by overtraining to exhaustion. Even still, the aforementioned neglect can be right and proper in other forms of patience. Such would be the case of an office worker who on Monday overhears a rumor that his boss will be fired on Friday. Patience may be best employed by removing all such notions from the office worker’s thoughts until Friday, when patience would prove to be the noblest of his otherwise nosy endeavors during the week.
These are silly examples, but they do illustrate that patience involves a degree of prudence, if not an exercise in such. To return to the word, one becomes more efficient in terms of patience by dealing with worry, anxiety, or any other deterrence that might suppress joy or love. Thus, patience doesn’t become a form of escapism, but an art of self-improvement. Perhaps, that’s why it is often so painful. Thank goodness for that Tom Petty song.