By MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN | Soulveda
Patience is the exercise of restraint in trying situations. It is a virtue, which enables the individual to proceed towards worthy goals, undeterred by adverse circumstances or repeated provocations. If he allows himself to become upset by opposition, taunts or other kinds of unpleasantness, he will never reach his goals. He will simply become enmeshed in irrelevancies.
The only way to deal with the irksome side of daily living is to exercise patience. Patience will ensure that whenever one has some bitter experience, he will opt for the way of tolerance rather than that of reaction to provocation. It will enable one to absorb shocks and to continue undeterred on one’s onward journey.
Patience, as well as being a practical solution to the problems faced in the outside world, is also a means of positive character building. One who fails to exercise patience gives free rein to negative thoughts and feelings, and develops a personality, which is likewise negative; while one who remains patient is so morally bolstered by his own positive thoughts and feelings that he develops a positive personality.
Patience is no retreat, rather it amounts to taking the initiative along the path of wisdom and reason as opposed to the path of emotions. Patience gives one the strength to restrain one’s emotions in delicate situations and, instead, use one’s brain to find a course of action along result-oriented lines.
The present world is fashioned in such a way that everyone is necessarily confronted with unpleasant matters at one time or another. Unbearable circumstances have to be born somehow; harrowing events have to be witnessed and all kinds of pain have to be suffered. In such situations, succumbing to impatience leads to the kind of unnecessary emotional involvement which is counter-productive, while a demonstration of patience has a healing, beneficial effect, allowing one to tread the path of discreet avoidance.
Success in the present world is destined only for those who adopt the path of patience in adverse circumstances.