Patience

The search for a path through life

Photo: a great blue heron at sunrise. Piermont Pier, on the Hudson River, August 2024. Boo! It’s halloween. The heron may not seem like much of a seasonal image, but to fish it’s a bringer of death.

The Latin root for the word patience is in fact directly derived from the word patient, which means suffering.

And since we understand that patience is in fact, a quality in human beings that has to be expressed intentionally – if we wish to be patient we must go against the impulses that we have — the fact is that Gurdjieff’s famous (among his followers, at least) citation regarding the need for ”intentional suffering” is actually just a fancy and oblique way of saying that we need to be more patient. It is precisely that, no more and no less; and although I’d be the first to say that there are many metaphysical nuances to this practice, in the end, it is simple enough—it’s a direct practice of being present in the moment.