When should I be patient and when should I take action?
This can be a tough question for anyone at any level in life. I know it has been for me, at every stage of my life up to this point. I remember thinking that epiphanies brought about by consuming and then applying knowledge would be a permanent solution to this puzzle.
I suppose I’m old enough to possess the wisdom through experience to know that there is no such epiphany. I’ve had epiphanies. Did they create permanent change? No. Nothing does. Habitualized action creates permanent change. Anything else is snake oil.
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy
Patience and action are practical examples and applications of yin and yang. Buddhist philosophy has been a big help for me in taking the pressure off of the choice between patience and proactivity.
Because it is natural to worry about being too patient just as it is normal to worry about taking too much action. Bringing mindfulness into my life helped to relieve some of the pressure that modern life puts on us to always be doing something exciting and interesting while simultaneously always relaxing in an exotic location vacation. And of course, making sure to document anything and everything one does in HD 4K photo and video, posted and reposted in portrait and landscape mode.
After suffering textbook burnout multiple times in my life, I overcalibrated towards patience. Buddhism, Taoism, and other spiritual philosophies that I studied lent themselves to patience and non-doing, which I felt I desperately needed at the time. Stoicism helped steer me back towards proactivity.
“Action without vision is blind; vision without action is just a dream.” – Nelson Mandela
I have found that Stoicism pairs well with Buddhism and Taoism. I would counsel people to consume all three in equal proportion. Stoicism helped teach me to take action and to do so boldly and consistently AND THEN to let go from there.
Detach from the outcome. Let go of how the action is received and perceived.
That last part is a major missing piece from the good advice I received my entire life and hear/see being given to people these days by well-meaning folks. My experience has taught me that the majority of people are heavily tied up in the outcome of their actions. Not just entangled, but almost completely identified with their actions.
That is also totally normal and natural. Aren’t we taught to believe that we are the result of our actions? Even if we aren’t taught that, isn’t there a consensus that a person’s identity is what they do? This is where spiritual philosophies and spiritual teachings fill in the hole I and many people feel inside of us when we’ve lived a life identified externally.
The teachings of Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, and others provide empathy and compassion for myself and others in place of the default of judgment. The judgment of the patience, the judgment of the action, and the judgment of the results. Replacing all that judgment requires teaching and training because we live in a society that encourages and rewards judgment.
Traditionally we have been our own worst critic. The modern era of the comment section has put negative judgment on steroids and placed it into a weapon of mass destruction with unlimited ammo.
“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” Mohsin Hamid
The scales of balancing patience and action are properly weighted with studying philosophy and spirituality.
Studying and applying the knowledge of these disciplines also helps to put an immeasurable, immaterial, internal balance on the scale in our very measurable, material, externally focused world.
Before them, I was lost. I may not yet be found but I know I am at least on a path rather than walking alone and confused in the dark.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 