The British School of Meditation Blog

Patience

This blog is about patience. Learning to meditate has helped me to be more patient. I was a very impatient person growing up. I was impatient with my younger brothers and sisters and would spend hours alone in my bedroom to keep away from them. I was impatient with myself when I couldn’t learn things quickly enough. I was good at most subjects at school but really struggled with maths. I knew I had to pass maths O Level to go onto do A Levels and get to university. I was therefore very impatient with my maths teacher who, it seemed to me, didn’t explain things in a way I could understand. I did pass my O Level maths, because my very patient mother helped me to understand what seemed like a foreign language to me.
As a teacher I could be impatient with my students and the gift of meditation helped me to make this realisation. I didn’t want to be like my old maths teacher, I wanted the students I taught to understand and come to love my subjects, history, and religious studies.
As I got more and more into meditation I learnt to slow down and live in the moment. When we are impatient we are thinking ahead and wanting things to be different. Meditation taught me to live in, and appreciate each moment as the gift it is. Learning to live in the present.
Here is a short poem by Rilke about patience:

Be patient
to all that is unsolved
in your heart ….
Try to love the questions
themselves…..

Do not now seek the answers
which cannot be given
because you would not be able
to live them,
and the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then
gradually,
Without noticing it
Live along some distant day
Into the answers.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet 1934