When Patience & Wisdom Come Together

In my ‘play’ journal I wanted to test how brown and purple would look on tan paper. I wrote patience first, then wisdom, then the white text in the middle. I had to let the largest words dry for a long time before attempting to write with white ink on top of them – a lesson learned the hard way! St. Augustine’s words – Patience is the companion of Wisdom – clearly accentuate my experience creating this page. The hurry-up-and-get-it-done side of me wanted everything to dry quickly so I could get to the white letters and be finished. The experienced calligrapher in me wisely reminded myself of the botched and blurry pieces in my ‘scrap calligraphy’ box behind my desk that were the result of not waiting long enough for ink to dry. In this piece, wisdom won – whew!

How do we gain patience? By being patient. It’s not a great way to learn it, yet when we are NOT patient we can look back and see the error in our ways. The hurried things that don’t come out the way we want, the disrupted relationships that do not grow, and the decisions we have rushed in order to just get things done, or even the things said in haste that frazzle everyone involved. Pushing may seem like a great move, until you have to live with the messy outcome. The most patient people I know have learned through painful experiences that sometimes the best thing to do is sleep on it before making that next move.

How do we gain wisdom? Through experience and lots of mistakes. No one’s life goes perfectly every single day. Which means we have abundant opportunities to learn from experience, mistakes, and understand how to do it better next time. With each change in life we have the option to learn and move forward, or continue to make the same mistakes again and again. The wisest people I know live their lives better from the experiences and lessons that have learned along their journey. They are willing to pause for the cause, think, and then apply the lessons they have learned in the past to the decisions they are making today.

Which one do you struggle with more – patience or wisdom? Whichever one it is, maybe today you could try to be more patient or pause to apply your experiences in order for your tomorrow to be that much better. My encouragement to you is to experience the contentment and joy that comes when patience and wisdom work together.