“What seems like courage is really persistence–the ability to put part of yourself on hold–Patience.
– Barbara Gordon – 20th century American writer
Yes, patience is a certain kind of courage…and perhaps, more so than the impulsive “throw yourself on a grenade to save your buddies” kinds of actions we’re used to touting as courage–the kind that garners medals of valor. In this post, we’re speaking again to the trait psychology labels “the ability to delay gratification.” The exercise of patience is an example of this ability that is so necessary to maturity. In that connection, we hold growing and maturing as an act of courage; one we exercise as we continue to grow and mature throughout the life cycle, if we so choose.
A friend who shared my early dancer’s life, sent me a You Tube video of another former dancer–a 102 year old woman in a nursing home, whose much younger friends and relatives bring a video they have found of her. For the first time in her long life, she is spellbound, watching the young dancer she once was, in performance. When asked what she was feeling, this bed-bound yet still beautiful woman, fully present, articulate, and clearly delighted, says, “I wish I could get up out of this bed and do it all over again.” So elegant! So composed! So completely confirmed in her essential being. How well I know and fervently share that wish to dance again!
Giving one’s self to something outside oneself–something grand, majestic, and demanding–an Art, or Science, a Philosophy perhaps, a Sport, or a physical practice like Yoga–in short, “extending one’s self” in pursuit of union with that something that is greater–M. Scott Peck, M.D. (the celebrated author of “The Road Less-Traveled”) calls a “self-enlarging experience.” Through this devotion to higher Principle, we grow into its majesty and touch Infinity.
But not only does it take patience to develop our skill. It requires an even larger patience to lie in bed at 102, bearing the loss of our physical skill, while bearing its fruit deep within us. Inside, forever, we are every beautiful part of life our patience has allowed us to master, whole, complete, eternal. So let me here salute my dancer soul sister with the words of that paean to our shared art: from the musical “A Chorus Line”: “Kiss Today Goodbye, and Point Me Toward Tomorrow, I did what I had to do, and I won’t regret what I did for Love…what I did for Love.”
May we all find that which calls us Higher and makes of Life, a Quest for the Divine.