Virtue Quest

How much of the world's weight should I carry?

I consider tolerance to be a kind of stop-gap, a second-best, a hand-me-down virtue at most. For example, if I said to my beloved, “Darling, I tolerate you,” I would deserve the slap I would receive. Tolerance is the virtue of bearing with some necessary but undesirable thing. It is not the ideal toward which I strive.

That said, tolerance is a real virtue, even if a secondary one: I would place it as a sub-virtue of Fortitude or Courage, as a form of patience and perseverance. But it is only virtuous when directed to something that is both undesirable and necessary.

It’s clear to me that other people don’t fall into the category of “undesirable.” A human being is, by his or her very existence, good. This particular person may be inconvenient or uncomfortable – or even dangerous – to me at this particular time. But what is undesirable is not that person’s humanity; the inconvenience or danger is what is bad.

What isn’t so clear to me, sometimes, is whether I myself fall into that “undesirable” category. (more…)

Patience is a virtue

I used to describe myself as unemployed. Then I started calling myself a freelance writer. Then, last week, I had a pretty good job interview during which the interviewer as much as told me I’d be hired, once the proper hoops had been jumped through.

So, being the impulsive person that I am, I started looking for one of those big-ticket items that one can acquire only when one has legitimate employment. I went apartment hunting.

The problem, of course, is that I do not as yet actually have the job I have almost been offered. Hoops remain to be jumped through. And apartments seem to require (for reasons beyond my willingness to imagine) actual solid proof of employment. As if anyone else in the financial sector operated that way!

Patience accepts reality as really real

Now, patience is not just the virtue of waiting for things that you have to wait for. It’s the virtue of waiting, well, with patience. That is, it’s holding on to a basic peace and tranquility while waiting. It’s a refusal to become anxious or unreasonably fearful.

In short, it’s accepting the reality that the world does not revolve around me.

Overcoming anxiety with patience

For about two and a half days, I was poring over internet apartment listings, visiting the actual apartments, making lists and budgets and comparisons … and talking to friends and family in hopes of finding some justification for immediate and unnecessary action.

Funny, they all counseled me to wait.

And, when I actually allowed myself to listen to their advice, I found (to my dismay!) that they were the reasonable and correct ones, and that I was letting my desire and anxiety run away with me. I had to remind myself of the facts of the situation. I had to bring myself back down to reality.

And reality, as it so often does, brought me back to peace and set me free from my fears.

I won’t say that I’ve become a patient man. But I will say that I’ve learned a lesson in patience. I am growing, slowly, in the virtue of patience. And I must remember to be patient while I grow in that very virtue.