Patience

 As I sit here tonight, I think about the concept of patience.  Patience is the mental fortitude to wait and persevere through life no matter the obstacles set forth in front of you.  Life can only give you so much before you have to learn on your own.  To think that life’s trials and tribulations are reconciliation with such a concept leaves the mind wondering what is to come for a life put on hold.  What is destiny in a world that seems set in stone already?

As I think of such a concept as patience, I draw near to a memory in the past.  I am sitting in a classroom before one of my favorite professors, Dr. Yusuff.  I have written about him before, but today I wish to reflect on a word he taught me.  Dr. Yusuff is the father of a childhood friend of mine, a doctorate in religion, and a professor at the local university I attended in my hometown of Vineland, New Jersey.  He taught me about the word sabir.  Sabir means patience, perseverance, or endurance.  He said it was paramount in his Islamic faith, to remain calm and steadfast through hardship, trusting that things will unfold in due time.  

As I write this very blog, I see the lamp flicker as I sit and write in silence.  Sabir means more to me because of who I learned it from.  We would finish class, and walk to our cars together talking about life until it was time to go.  

To endure hardship is a part of life.  To build thick skin and a tough mind is tantamount in life you see.  To overcome obstacles is to climb mountains, only to see the beauty from the top.  Would life be worth living without perseverance and endurance to remain steadfast and calm through life’s trials, testing the strong and separating those who are too weak to keep going no matter the barriers in front of one?

One never knows what truly will happen in life.  To think tomorrow is promised in a fib that lives inside the minds of all of us.  Each day is a gift, you see, to realize such a thing is to shift one’s conscious perception and change one’s frequency to that of greatness.  To achieve greatness has many paths.  I remember back to a conversation with a friend’s uncle who has since passed from cancer.  He said Sean,  you are 22, if you don’t do anything by this age, you will never accomplish anything great.  It provided me with a sense of urgency, but at the same time it left me perplexed at such a concept.  Is it true that those who start young have a competitive and statistical advantage in life?  Yes, but it is not the end of the road.

No matter what life may throw your way, Sabir is what is necessary to overcome.  But, there is a difference between do-ers and dreamers.  I think back to the lessons of Steve Jobs I have watched on Youtube.  I wish to become a great businessman, so I studied the best for a long time.  It was this that I remember most about the man,  “those that make great things take action, while thinkers go nowhere.  It is action that separates those who achieve greatness and those who achieve mediocrity.”  

So one is left wondering where action meets Sabir, or patience.  To what lengths will man go to achieve his goal, his objectives, his purpose, his destiny, before the fruits of his labor begin to ripen.  Why do some men rise while others fall?  No one truly knows, but to remain steadfast and calm through it all remains the key equation to this mathematical conundrum I call life.  To endure is to know that the best is yet to come if you just put one foot in front of the other.