Patience

What Patience means in a networked world

A community theatre programme’s missing credit is being discussed, and the person who uploaded the page has not answered. The group begins treating the delay as an admission. You suggest leaving the explanation open until the agreed check-in tomorrow, while keeping the credit issue visible. The empty reply box has been promoted to witness; it has yet to say anything.

Patience allows a person time to explain before turning a delay into evidence about their conduct. Silence may have many causes; inventing a reassuring one is no sounder than inventing a guilty one. Keep the question open, agree a reasonable point for follow-up and distinguish what is known from what awaits an answer. Waiting for an explanation need not stop you preserving records, meeting a deadline or taking necessary protective action. The virtue concerns a worthwhile process and its time, not an unlimited entitlement to yours.

Patience gives…

An explanation has room to contribute when the verdict has not already been announced. Clear check-in points can also let a group continue its work without making every refresh a new test of trust.

Finding the balance

In ordinary life

A time difference

Allow for the other person’s circumstances without claiming to know why they have not replied.

A decision point

If an answer does not arrive by the agreed time, decide what the available evidence and practical needs warrant. Describe the gap honestly.

Nearby virtues, different work

Fairness

Fairness weighs what counts as evidence. Patience gives the explanation its reasonable opportunity to arrive.

Self-Command

Self-Command can stop an impulsive accusation. Patience sustains the willingness to leave an unresolved question open.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Indefinite postponement counterfeits Patience when waiting prevents a needed decision. A reasonable deadline can protect both the chance to explain and the work that must continue.

How to cultivate Patience

• Set a clear follow-up point where the matter permits it.
• Separate the missing answer from conclusions about motive.
• Continue work that does not depend on the explanation.

Try it today

For an unanswered message, distinguish the facts you know from the motive you are imagining. Allow a reasonable reply window or use an agreed follow-up point. Keep urgent protective action separate from waiting for an explanation.

Questions worth returning to

• What does the delay establish by itself?
• When does the decision actually need to be made?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.

1. We ought, therefore, to plead the cause of the absent against ourselves, and to keep our anger in abeyance: for a punishment which has been postponed may yet be inflicted, but when once inflicted cannot be recalled.

   Seneca, Of Anger
   Of Anger II.22

   Seneca asks us to give an absent person a hearing before acting on an accusation. Once a public verdict has travelled, withdrawing it may not undo its effects.

2. If he you would bring over to your sentiments be one that examines before he assents, you must give him leave at his leisure to go over the account again, and, recalling what is out of his mind, examine all the particulars, to see on which side the advantage lies: and if he will not think our arguments of weight enough to engage him anew in so much pains, it is but what we often do ourselves in the like case; and we should take it amiss if others should prescribe to us what points we should study.

   John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
   Book IV, CHAPTER XVI. OF THE DEGREES OF ASSENT.; 4. The right Use of it, mutual Charity and Forbearance, in a necessary diversity of opinions.

   A person who examines a claim needs time to examine your answer too. An immediate reply is not the measure of a thoughtful hearing.

3. No cast-iron rules can be laid down. Each case has to be dealt with as it arises, on the basis of its importance and of the context in which it occurs. To take too much pains in one case is as foolish—as illogical—as to take too little in another.

   John Dewey, How We Think
   Chapter VI, proportion in inquiry

   The amount of time and attention depends on the case. Patience can include a deadline suited to what is at stake.

4. I have talked with Hui for a whole day, and he has not made any objection to anything I said;— as if he were stupid. He has retired, and I have examined his conduct when away from me, and found him able to illustrate my teachings. Hui!— He is not stupid.

   Confucius, The Analects
   Book II, chapter 9

   Hui’s quietness initially seems like dullness, until Confucius considers his conduct. A missing verbal response can be an unreliable basis for a verdict.

5. I Heartily beg your Pardon for my Omission to write Yesterday. It was of no Failure of my tender Regard for you; but having been very much perplexed in my Thoughts on the Subject of my last, made me determine to suspend speaking of it 'till I came to myself.

   The husband in the final letter, in Richard Steele, The Spectator
   No. 142, Monday, August 13, 1711

   The missing letter has an explanation: the writer needed to gather his thoughts. The person awaiting a reply could not have learned that reason from the silence alone.

6. It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.

   Marcus Aurelius, Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius
   Book VI, section 52

   An unanswered question can remain unanswered for now. You need not turn the gap into a definite account of someone’s intentions.

7. Let us wait, therefore, for this letter. It may bring many extenuations. It may make many things intelligible and excusable which now are not to be understood. Don’t let us be severe, don’t let us be in a hurry to condemn him.

   Mrs. Weston, in Jane Austen, Emma
   Volume III, chapter X, Mrs. Weston on Frank’s letter

   Mrs. Weston wants the promised explanation before a final judgment. The letter may clarify matters; she does not yet possess it.

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