Slogan #42

Whichever of the two occurs, be patient.

Life’s pendulum sometimes swings from extreme happiness to extreme sadness and it’s in these outliers that practice leads the way back to homeostasis and equanimity. Slogan #42 offers patience as the key to unlocking overwhelm, distraction, lethargy, and drama through its perspective of attending to the long game. A sustainable practice must include unconditional patience of both joy and pain, opening and closing, and release and resistance. As Pema Chodron writes, “Patience is not learned in safety.”

Patience allows for the perspective of time to cultivate a spacious, equanimous mind. The practice of patience forges a new relationship to self by facing our own suffering in order to recognize the suffering in others. Thomas Merton defined compassion as “the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” Instead of “Why me?” the question to ask yourself in moments of turmoil and conflict is: “How can I be of service to compassion in this moment?” Patience is not the passive “learned helplessness” but is courageously and creatively transformative.

“If things go well, be patient, they’ll change. If things go badly, be patient, they’ll change.”

Norman Fischer