Poetry | Life Skills

Patience in a Twittle

~ or three ~ and elephants too

Patience is a virtue empathetic tolerance to the fore resisting the urge to be a savour giving scope for doers to explore

Patience is a virtue a solid pillar of grace respect for them who err in their ways allowance to those in need of more space

Patience is a virtue fed from the well of time knowing you can’t control the outcome when the hour-frame’s not yours; it’s ours

© Carolyn Hastings 2021

Patience is not simply the ability to wait — it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. Joyce Meyer

Patience and waiting. We’ve been doing a lot of both this past year and a bit. Maybe one more than the other. It’s hard to be patient when stressed and pressed for time or when you feel like you’ve lost control of your life. ‘I’m patient’ devolves to ‘impatient’ in less time than it takes to remove the apostrophe and the word space. Waiting is a test of our patience. And, as Joyce Meyer suggests, it’s our behaviour while we wait that determines how well we succeed in that test.

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson. Elon Musk

Patience is not an inherent human trait. It’s a skill that takes practice. It has as much to do with learning to manage the pressure points that trigger impatience as it does activating the basics of patience itself. As Elon Musk has found, ‘it’s a tough lesson’. One that takes a life-time to perfect.

Have patience with all things, but, first of all with yourself. Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622)

Patience, like love, trust and respect, is not something you can habitually dispense upon others without bestowing the same on yourself. Being patient with yourself involves forgiving yourself for your human foibles while still loving, respecting and trusting yourself to being faithful to who you truly are, not necessarily who you aspire to be.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

We can learn much about patience by observing Nature; for example the behaviour of animals like elephants, the iconic symbol of patience, calm and stability.

About twittles

Each of the three ‘Patience is a virtue’ verses is exactly 100 letters. It’s that feature, and being arranged in four lines with a smidgeon of rhyme, that makes these verses, twittles. Here’s a trio of twittle micropoems I wrote about hope –

And an open invitation to all writers to come on board the twittle train –

Thank you for reading. I hope my twittle foray into the realms of patience has offered you something to reflect upon. I would love to hear your comments. 🙏 💕