What it Means to be a Man VIII: Patience

Patience may be a virtue, but it is one that we rarely see cultivated among our number. We are conflicting told in platitudes that we should acquire patience, with an implication that we’ll one day be rewarded for it, but the rest of our society is built around trying to harness and hijack our inherently impatient nature. Patient sits in hand in hand with persistence, an immediate result is not a necessity, simply achieving the right result is. Similarly, lack of patience is borne of an excess of entitlement, something a lot of modern men seem afflicted me, and I am desperate to rid myself of.

There are some good examples out there - Sean Plott and David Foster Wallace spring to mind. Both men who are slow and measured when they talk, kind and gentle in their dealings with other people, happy to take as much time as necessary to solve a problem or help someone else out. In fact, these two probably embody more qualities that I aspire to than anyone else I can think of, and Sean especially has been the closest thing I’ve had to a role model for years now.

I’m as much a slave to the instant gratitude lifestyle as the next guy, but I’m tiring of said gratitude never providing any meaningful sustenance. So, I guess that has to change.