This Is The Kind Of Patience That Will Drastically Improve Your Life

I want to learn patience. But not the kind of patience that lets people settle into one boring life because they are hoping that the best will come or because they believe they can do nothing about their current lives.

I want to learn the patience that saves a man from throwing himself off a roof. That makes him decide to get down and just call a friend or go have a cup of coffee — because you can’t go wrong with coffee — or just give his life another chance because he deserves it. That comforting patience. That looks like a mother holding her son as he rocks in her arms crying.

I am coming to realize that this patience is here to save you from the moment when you’re about to lose hope completely.

You see, as life goes on, it’ll throw all kinds of challenges at you and at times you will not at all be ready to face any of those challenges. So, you might immediately think that this is just who you are. That maybe you will never be able to face any other challenge. That it’s better to give up. Forever.

Now, when this sort of thing happens, I believe that it’s only one moment, one single moment, that separates a man from a whole other level of possible desperation.

One moment where you are stuck between two choices.

You can decide that, no matter how much you work, it will always be useless, and stop now. Or you can decide to get up and work, regardless. Maybe you will find that brilliant idea that you would have never reached if you didn’t throw yourself into your work.

You can decide to walk away from someone. Or you could decide to listen and give that person a chance.

Either way, there is just one moment that is always separating you from doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing.

One moment that will save you if you think things through instead of rushing to make a decision based on emotion.

The trick, however, is that it’s not just one moment that you’ll get to experience. It’s a lot of moments. An uncountable number.

Patience will be the friend that tells you to hold your strength for a while. That this thing will pass — your boredom, your suffering, the idea that you hate your life, that your love is worthless, that you will never be good at anything.

That urge to let go of things you want will disappear, it won’t last, only if you’re patient enough to get all your senses together and analyze what you really want.

I want to learn that patience because giving up is something I hate, because it can come so easily. So incredibly easily. One moment and you lose everything but that moment feels like nothing. You only feel what you have lost years later, when regret becomes a tornado that eats up everything.

I beg to learn that patience, because as hard as it may seem, I know what it can do.

I know because I almost gave up before. Almost fell for one of those moments myself. Almost believed what people said.

“So,you say you want to be a writer?”

“Funny, I can’t see why someone would want to read you.”

“You are obviously an amateur.”

I almost gave up. Maybe I’m just one of those millions who want to be writers, I thought. Well I’m never going to write again, I said.

Until I thought for a moment, held a pen, and found myself writing another poem.

You see, I realized when I was that temporarily patient with my sudden loss of hope that I don’t want to write to impress.

I want to write to be.

I guess that’s what that kind of patience does.

That’s why it’s important to learn it.

Because it just gives you another chance to be.

And that, I like to believe, is what saving yourself looks like.