Patience is not an American virtue. We want results, and fast. Patience sounds suspiciously passive; it’s for old ladies who need it with their hip replacement, or for Job, while he waits for G-d to finish off all his relatives. The young and strapping take the bull by the horns and make their own luck. They’re in charge; they shoot first. 

When I contemplate my own patience and occasional (I mean regular) lack of, I wonder if perhaps there’s really two kinds: one to deal with things that are pretty much guaranteed to work out but take more time than we think we have (waiting in line at Starbucks while the person ahead in line orders for his entire office), and the other to bear a more existential anxiety about uncertain outcomes. The first kind should be somewhat easy to cultivate. I try every morning to grow my five-year-old’s tolerance to the 50 seconds it takes to fry the egg he wants “right nooooooooow.” Anyone above the toddler age has got to be working on waiting in line nicely, reciting the periodic table in their head as they do so if need be, or—how about that—making small compliments to strangers around them to try and make someone’s day instead of grumbling. 

The second, patience while we wait for things to happen or not, for the right people to cross our paths and the right ideas to enter our brains, touches that soft spot where we realize we’re not very much in control at all, on the cosmic scale. We can moan and try things out, send messages in bottles and bounce like Tigger, but the universe has its pace and we just don’t get to dictate it. Which is not to say we should just sit our our tuchuses and wait, but that patience of a higher order perhaps has to do with softening our expectations. Accepting the foolishness of our cherished belief in a direct line between our actions and desired outcome. 

Anyone wanting to ponder the mysteries of life should keep the Frog and Toad Storybook Treasury close at hand. It belongs up there with all the great mystical books. In one particularly good story, The Garden, Toad plants some seeds and starts yelling at them right away. “Grow, grow, GROW!” Frog, always the wise guy, explains that yelling will only intimidate the seeds and suggests Toad just leave them be, let sun and rain do their work. But Toad doesn’t like to wait; he thinks surely something is needed of him fort this process to work. 

And the seeds sprout, as they do. 

I wonder: how often do we work too hard in order to feel in charge, when we could just plant a seed, practice patience, and watch good things unfurl, as they will?