A Socratic Discussion of Patience

Section Two

Lets try to decipher what the essence is of admirable patience. Lets begin by using counterexamples from the Socratic theory.

Jane is a waitress. She serves brunch in a busy restaurant. She is a habitually focused person. She has no trouble concentrating on remembering the multiple things that a waitress must keep track of while working a hard shift. However she is very snappy to her customers whenever they are too needy or demanding. She has little to no patience with their behavior. This effects her tips.

So you see we can have a focused person who is not patient. Perhaps the part of focus that is necessary for admirable patience is the aspect of focus which allows the mind to pare down to the important information and rationally act or speak.

Jane is a detective. She is as focused internally as a person can be. She has been on a particular case for quite some time. At a crime scene she quickly asses the scattered pieces of evidence and is sure that the culprit is still in the house. Instead of patiently waiting for back up she rushes into the kitchen where she apprehends the suspect but is shot in the leg.

So perhaps the aspect of paring down information needs to be coupled with the ability to asses what the most positive outcome for everyone will be.

Jane is the mother of a sixteen year old girl named JoJo. JoJo is slightly plump but definitely not overweight. She looks like a healthy teenager. However JoJo does have a sweet tooth which causes Jane alarm, because she is afraid one day the calories will catch up to her daughter. Jane tells her daughter that she is "filling out" and she says this often even though it obviously upsets her emotional teenager. But she feels justified because she is concerned about her daughters overall health. Jane is being very thoughtful about her daughters health; and her intentions are good however she is not being patient about how she goes about dealing with the situation.

So along with thoughtfulness there must also be an aspect of putting yourself in someone elses shoes, like empathy in order to achieve admirable patience.

So lets test empathy. Jane is a nurse in the emergency room. She is a very internally and habitually patient person. She would have to be to maintain her job of ten years. A pregnant woman comes into her care having bad contractions It is her firs time having a baby and they discuss how the woman is very excited to be beging the large family she always dreamed of. She had been an only child. Jane discuses with the woman how happy she was to have grown up with several brothers and sisters and that she is happy the woman wants a big family. Suddenly the woman passes out and the baby goes into fetal distress. Jane cannot wait for the doctor or the woman to wake up and has to deliver the baby. In the process she finds that for medical reasons the woman will probably not be able to have more children if she continues the operation but she cannot wait patiently for the surgeon.

Therefore we can have empathy without patience. To refine empathy (which could be defined as one persons ability to feel another persons situation) that is needed into a necessary part of having admirable patience might be an addition to empathy of acceptance (Ietting something be what it is for better or for worse).

Jane is a drug addict. She lives with her boyfriend Bob. Jane continually verbally abuses Bob, steals his money and belongings and caries dangerous people around her. Bob and Jane had been in love for several years before she developed her habit. So Bob decides to be accepting of her problem. From the beginning he tries to get her professional help. He patiently admits her to rehab after rehab facility. He patently accepts the fact that she is sick and puts himself in her shoes knowing he would not want her to abandon him in time of need. He loves her so he sticks by her. Three years later Bob is in debt that will take years to repay he has gone gray he lost all his friends and even his family keeps their distance. Jane is still using. Bob is still patiently accepting.

So bob is both thoughtfully empathetic and accepting of the outcome, and very patient. This is not however an admirable patience. Jane is sinking deeper and deeper into her disease and Bob is being effected only negatively be her and his actions. Everyone is moving into a more and more negative existence.

This needs a refinement. Maybe this empathetic acceptance needs to have added a clarification that the parties involved need to be at least trying (regardless of the outcome) to lift themselves and others into a more positive and moral existence than they are currently in. So the acceptance piece needs only to go as far as a thought process and not necessarily as an action.

Lets try again. Jane is a drug addict. Her husband Bob sent her to a rehab facility, for the second time. After her stay, he had her go to a half way house, he changed the locks and only let their children see her when she was stable. Bob patiently loved his wife and stuck by her, even though at a distance at times as long as Jane was at least making an effort to help herself and stay positive. . All in all in the next five years she had two relapses, but now has been clean for ten years and they are a happy healthy family due to Bobs admirable patience, his ability to protect himself and his children and Jane.

Section Three

Discussing how words are related to each other to get closer to the essence of admirable patience, is difficult. Lets take calm and peaceful for instance. Using the two stories of drug addicted Jane, we see that in story one Bob is calm. He is also peaceful. However this is not really working for either of them. Peaceful is a word that we associate often with how we are towards others. In story two it could be said that Bob is peaceful in a way, but he also keeps his children away from his wife and changes the locks on their house. That is not peaceful behavior. However it is internally peaceful, that is turned inwardly peaceful behavior so that may need to be a refinement of the word peaceful in order to have it be a part of admirable patience.

Then there is the calm Bob. Bob is calm in story one but he is stressed out all the time. So therefore Bob gives out the appearance of being calm both on the inside and outside when he is actually only calm on the outside. Probably due more to exhaustion and defeat than a positive version of calm anyway. Maybe a refinement of calm needs to have the element of an internally relaxed person. In story two Bob is internally relaxed and stable with his wife and his children and the entire situation. These two refinements seem to stem from a inward relationship with oneself that is healthy, positive and relaxed.

Now lets see how autonomy and letting something grow at its own pace are related to each other. Again lets use the two drug-addicted Janes. In both stories Bob gives Jane the drug rehab facilities which is an autonomy for it gives her the ability to get strait through information and counseling. It gives her the ability to figure out for herself that her life will be better off if she is clean.

How is this related to the letting something grow at its own pace. Well that needs a refinement because in the first story Jane never grows and in the second story she does. This commonly used phrase "grow at your own pace" is often used in a context where something is stagnant for long periods of time. So the refinement would have to be that the person is actually growing. The rate does not matter and the setbacks don't matter, but there must be a mostly upward growth, morally and positively. In this way these two words seem to have in common the idea a change. But change in a growth related sense. So maybe an essence of patience is that when admirable it leaves the possibility for moral,

physical, spiritual, growth. The common core in all four of these ideas seems to be a internal, spiritual and moral growth.

What about the relationship between being actively mentally engaged and slowing down/taking your time. This would be the opposite of being hasty/hurrying and being lazy or having fear driven inaction described as patience.

How are these two ideas related.

Once again the common core seems to be inner motivations that are moral and bring about a positive change for the people involved. And when we say a positive change it is important to clarify the idea of positive to be spiritually positive as opposed to monetarily or any other type of positive change that may not be spiritually and morally positive.

So the essence of empathy may be an inner relaxation, that is a relationship with oneself that is based on a deep understanding of one self and the ability to slow down and feel what is happening at a relaxed level. Then that leads a person to feel empathy, a deep understanding of another person or situation and still have acceptance not trying to control or manipulate, for what may follow, by way of giving any information that may be helpful but still letting things take their natural course to achieve their full potential. This deep inner peace will leave a person mentally and physically able to deal in the most moral and positive way, the most admirably positive way that they can.