La Voz de Galicia – 16 de agosto, 2024 →
According to the second and third definitions in the dictionary of the Real Academia Galega, patience is the “quality of those who endure adversity and misfortune without rebelling” and the “quality of those who have the calmness to wait.” To me, patience is also a mystery, something I don’t quite know how to learn or acquire, but once you start practicing it, once it becomes a part of your life, everything seems more manageable and less serious. However, I don’t know how to practice patience either. Perhaps we acquire this quality over the years when we become aware that sometimes we can’t change the circumstances (or change the world), and we have to accept that things are only achieved little by little, with time, by persevering. But unfortunately, we aren’t always able to summon patience when we need it the most.
I suppose that the pandemic, in its own way, forced us to practice patience in the sense of “having the calmness to wait.” But now the world is different, and for some reason, it seems like we have less patience to deal with our day-to-day lives. I don’t blame us for this, but rather everything around us that makes it harder each day to accept the circumstances of our existence, that makes us lose our calm each day in our attempt to survive.
I think that impatience is more contagious than patience. And that no matter how much patience we claim to have, it’s probably not enough. But to face the current reality, the uncertainty that surrounds us, the general tension, and the lack of hope, we have no choice but to keep working to change things and give ourselves time to practice patience daily, even if we don’t know how…
