“Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue”

― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary

I get compliments for the depth of my patience and I have mixed feelings about that.

I certainly understand the appeal from my experience of the opposite. Let’s say I’m helping you put together an IKEA couch for your living room and while I’m trying to figure out what two person task the next picture is describing, you are so much less patient than me as to go off to the pub.

Not only am I alone because you are gone, the value of my current actions is pretty much gone. And dang it if I figured out what the picture meant just as I heard the door slam, not much immediate gratification for my mental efforts.

If we both had the same amount of patience in this situation, none of this would have happened and we’d be happily sitting on your new couch.

On the other hand, let’s say that we both have the same amount of patience, but the thing we are being patient about will never come to fruition (like flying cars) or what if the thing we are being patient about expires in value well before our patience has run out (like the opportunity to avert climate disaster). Being patient in these scenarios seems to me to be the form of despair described in the Ambrose Bierce quote above.

Patience and pathos share the proto-Indo-European root that means suffering. Pathos is not the arousal of feeling in general, but rather the arousal of pity and sympathy. Patience is not just waiting, it is waiting while in pain.

The ability to wait has infinite value, as mathematicians and physicists have deduced that if you wait long enough, anything is possible. I don’t think it follows that if you take on enough pain, anything is possible. And how ironic would it be to patiently await an end to suffering.

Is it okay when being complimented for patience to be touched by the recognition of the pain and yet wish it wasn’t there? If the pain wasn’t there, I’d still be waiting. I think the benefit to others is still the same in amount and character. The cost to me would be much lower. Thus being able to wait dispassionately is a net gain over being patient.

Moreover, what about waiting with the opposite of suffering? Some antonyms for pathos are cheer, glee, happiness and joy. Waiting with joy, waiting in good cheer – what if I were to do more of that? Would you still compliment me? Would you join me?