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.

Tolerating imperfection

My friends know that I’m the annoying sort of perfectionist who lets his fears of failure stop him from attempting good things. It’s a very bad habit, a genuine vice. But on the occasions I overcome it, I tend to swing to the opposite vice of sloppiness or even self-sabotage.

This makes it look like I’m very hard on myself, and so most people usually advise me to cut myself some slack, to be more tolerant of my failures. To me, this always looks like “lowering my standards” or giving in to vice.

But I was talking with my spiritual director the other day, and he reminded me that I should not tolerate evil. He pointed out that, while I was very intolerant of imperfection, I was very tolerant of temptation and of my own acts of vice and sin. This is exactly the opposite of what I should be striving for.

Imperfection is a normal and necessary part of human life: we are all finite, limited, and incomplete in and of ourselves. We depend on one another for everything from the basic necessities of survival to our highest personal fulfillment. Somehow I’ve got it in my skull that I need to be absolutely 100% self-sufficient, that I have to know everything and do everything without accepting any help from anybody, or else I’m a failure. That is a lie. It is utterly false, because it is contrary to human nature. My limitations and needs may be inconvenient or difficult, but they are not bad or wrong.

In other words, they are necessary, even if they are sometimes undesirable. I should tolerate them.

Not tolerating evil

Those imperfections are what a philosopher might call a “natural evil” or an “ontological evil,” that is, something lacking in some natural good of being. If I were blind, that would be an “evil” in the nature of my eyes; it’s an imperfection and a limitation. But it’s not a moral evil; it’s not an evil action, and it doesn’t make me an evil person.

Moral evil is what my spiritual director advised me not to tolerate. This returns to the ancient wisdom of Plato, that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit a crime or sin.

Why is this so? The answer I’m discovering is that, while natural evil is unavoidable, moral evil is unnecessary. There is no absolute reason I should do anything bad. I might make a mistake, or I might act out of ignorance, but there is nothing that binds me to do something I know is wrong. Nothing in the entire universe can compel me to choose to harm a fly, much less to harm my neighbor.

In other words, moral evil is intolerable – and most intolerable of all in myself.

So I need to turn completely around: I’ve been tolerating my neglect of friends and of duties, tolerating my “need” for hours of mind-numbing entertainment from TV or computer games; meanwhile, I’ve been intolerant of my ignorance and my lack of control over the impact of my work. I’ve got it backward.

I can’t be sure my efforts will succeed, but I can be sure that I will fail – and be a failure – if I don’t make any efforts. I need to learn to tolerate my imperfections, and become absolutely intolerant of my faults.

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.