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Become More Patient

The quality of patience goes a long way toward your goal of creating a more peaceful and loving self. The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what is, rather than insisting that life be exactly as you would like it to be. Without patience, life is extremely frustrating. You are easily annoyed, bothered, and irritated, Patience adds a dimension of ease and acceptance to your life. it’s essential for inner peace.
Becoming more patient involves opening your heart to the present moment, even if you don’t like it. If you are stuck in a traffic jam, late for an appointment, opening to the moment would mean catching yourself building a mental snowball before your thinking got out of hand and gently reminding yourself to relax. It might also be good time to breathe as well as an opportunity to remind yourself that, in the bigger scheme of things, being late is “small stuff.”
Patience also involves seeing the innocence in others. Remind yourself of the innocence of most other people’s behaviors. Such as, they are interrupting me because they care about me. It immediately brings forth a feeling of patience, and the attention is brought back to the moment. Irritation that may have been built is eliminated and you are reminded, once again, of how fortunate you are to have such beautiful people in your life. I have found that, if you look deeply enough, you can almost always see the innocence in other people as well as in potentially frustrating situations. When you do, you will become a more patient and peaceful person and, in some strange way, you begin to enjoy many of the moments that used to frustrate you.

-DSTSS, Richard Carlson

Role of Culture

Adults in the Kpelle tribe in central Liberia were asked to sort 20 objects. They organized them according to functional categories (i.e. knife with orange, or potato with a hoe). Western psychologists associate functional sorting with a low level of thought; but participants kept insisting that this was how a “wise man” would do it, the experimenter asked, “How would a fool do it?” He then received the “higher-order” categories he had originally expected - four neat piles with food in one, tools in another, and so on.