Be Patient. Patience is a virtue. Many a times I heard this.

As a young girl I thought: patience meant waiting for food to be ready, for someone to finish getting ready already, for my ride to pick me up. As an adult I laughed at what I perceived patience to be; had no choice but to study and learn from life and its trials, the choices were: do something if I can, suffer through it or choose to endure patiently with faith. When I couldn’t do something about it, I chose to suffer like a brat, not quite grasping the point of forbearance. Then it dawned on me that not only does life throw serious trials of patience unto one but many smaller irritating situations that require zealous patience, such as, placing a food order for delivery service and the person on the end of the line mishearing every letter pronounced on the five item menu, dealing with bad behaviour from strangers, calling for a service to be picked up by an automated robot directing me to the right option only to have the line hang up 15 minutes into waiting. Patience then seems needed far often than I had ever anticipated. Moving on to my spiritual years of adulthood I understood that patience is the code of living, and appreciated what patience really means.

Seek Allah’s help with patient perseverance and prayer. It is indeed hard except for those who are humble.

Quran [The Cow 2:45]

Indeed I was no where near being a humble human at that point in my life, my arrogant self believed that I was in control of all outcomes and situations, I was entitled for everything to work out for me as I wanted it to. Like the world owed me something, it doesn’t.

So be patient with gracious patience.

Quran [The Ways of Ascent 70:5]

Being patient is facing adversity with grace; dealing with life, pain and halts in a manner were we accept things as they are, often beyond our control. Patience is a knowing and it is a trust that all will come together, so befriending patience is a life skill, needed for the variables of life. Realizing that without bearing patience with poise and dignity then we will mostly be harming ourselves. In fact, when we look at life with an awareness that each moment, each episode is catered to coach and develop us into the best version of ourselves, then these hindrances, hurdles and trials become more meaningful, most certainly less painful. We come to develop a strong faith that indeed:

God does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear.

Quran [The Cow, 2:286]

In this observation, and through handling life’s traumas with forbearance we will begin to appreciate the irritating fly which keeps buzzing around, realizing it is here to educate us to remain unfazed. However, this life long practice takes daily work until discipline becomes a part of us.

The root of it all is patience, and the virtue of living is patience indeed, it is a choice to withhold from anxiety and to be calm through the difficulties. Each and every moment is a chance for us to strengthen or weaken our faith, be patient or lose our cool, accept or retaliate, react or respond, be grateful for the lesson or be unappreciative and blind to it. As a believer I know and am convinced that all patience exercised by me during hard times is not from my own will power, but from God as His mercy unto me. This is a believers mindset, and if you don’t believe it just look at the Palestinians who for almost a full century are experiencing atrocities we can’t even fathom. Then who is their patience from, and why?

Allah says: Be sure We shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods, lives, and the fruits of your toil. But give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere. Those who say, when afflicted with calamity, “To Allah we belong, and to Him is our return.’ They are those on whom descend blessings from their Lord, and mercy. They are the ones who receive guidance.

Quran [The Cow 2: 155-157]

These Palestinians in fact have not lost any hope in God, and they persevere fighting and never giving up their right to survive in their own land. With these words and this sight we carry on with a certainty that we will be tested, some more than others and in everything, as God promised us, but how to choose to deal with it, is up to us.