In the ultimate perspective, there is no time as everything is infinite and time is just a river that runs endlessly on, to paraphrase the writer James Joyce. But from a purely human point of view, that idea doesn’t really work, because it is essential to man, that some immediate goal be sought, and to have one and act on it, means necessarily the restriction of one vital expression over another. In reality, the object though, is not to chose one thing over another another, but instead to chose one that works more fully, in relationship with the other choices, and from that understanding the idea of patience is born.
Patience is fundamental when dealing with the competing interests , because through that one can fit them all together so that they are consistent with the broader aspiration( goal) of the self. That consistency infers that there is no loss of time or opportunity by dismissing one idea in favour of another, instead each idea cooperates with the other, and so makes for a larger advantage to the self than any one idea could do alone.
Patience therefore, is the withholding of the self in any activity that does not go well, and so he learns to give it up, and turn to another, on the same plane, or then again another still, until he feels he is pressing forward with the full cooperation of the cosmos and still et to the goal. That makes the goal important, not the task and that is the key to seeing big.
So, patience is not idle inaction, something to do while one whittle’s away the time, nor is it blind surrender to those larger forces before which an individual must retreat to stay alive, but instead it is a tentative mode of self-expression not because of phlegmatic and calm insouciance, but instead because it is a dynamic determination towards an ideal or spiritual end, in which the whole of the self can be brought to a focus.
The usual ideal in a conquest of the passions is a passionless nature, but that is wrong, as rather an excess of passion is needed to pursue a goal. No lukewarm individual with spineless feelings and little capacity for a burning heat of interest can go very far in service to the race, or for himself or his goals because patience above all, is a tool that must be worked and reworked, assiduously, meticulously and yes most of all, passionately.
In my anguish... 