Noel Manuel
The gift of patience is among the most interesting virtues of parenting. Good parenting or teaching stems from the ability to bear or persevere during the most challenging and adverse situations. To be patient literally means programming ourselves to produce the outcome that we desire. Being impatient means deprogramming ourselves to develop an unrealistic approach towards somebody or something.
Patience has always been considered the mother of all virtues, and it is this fact that compels us to increase the energy levels of this quality so as to regulate the outcome of every situation in a positive manner.
When it comes to patience, we only have a certain amount of energy level. And more often than not, this energy level burns out sooner than we expect. And no matter how hard we try to stretch the energy levels of our patience, we fail to subdue our reactions. It is natural and human nature. However, reactions are bad. Reactions are a change of attitude and mind set towards somebody or something, disapproving their actions and thoughts.
How often have we deprogrammed ourselves towards our children, when we miserably failed to stretch our energy levels of patience any further? How often have we reacted?
We all strive to be a paragon of high moral standards to our children. To ensure that we impart the highest moral values to our kids, we also need to understand that patience acts as the fertilizer to cultivating good moral values. Without patience, we would merely be planting the seeds of our moral codes without any apparent or visible results. With it, we will be enriching each value and moral with an extra ordinary flavour.
Children are the best source to testing the energy levels of our patience. They can drive you up the wall with their gimmicks and at times very capable of making you see red. We all tend to lose out on our patience with children, at some point of time or the other. And though the results we achieve out of deprogramming ourselves are almost spontaneous, the far-reaching effects are sadly disastrous.
Children, who repeatedly perform badly at school, are often rebuked by their elders. And when they fail to make the next grade, it’s even worse. But is life for our children centered only upon promotions and demotions?
Sometime ago a principal had advised a parent on something very important and I quote, “Your children don’t study at home and this is reflected in their performance in class.” And though, the parent had no apparent response at that point in time, he thought to himself and said, “this principal has miserably failed to make any further observations of my children. Or rather he unfortunately lacked the patience to do so.
Education is not about certificates and degrees alone. Nor is it about the beautiful abbreviations that tail behind the identity of a name. Children are born to be different and their behaviour is fast becoming more complex with technological advancement and cultural diaspora. As educationists and parents, we need to understand this transformation and spot the differences of interests and disinterests with PATIENCE.
The gift of patience is what I consider the key to all the other qualities and values that make our lives and our children’s lives so fulfilling. It allows us to view this planet as a place of endless choices, endless opportunities, endless chances and endless growth. There is always another day and another way. It’s a way of approaching the world in degrees of strength, instead of degrees of weakness, of living with degrees of love and goodness instead of degrees of fear.
I am enormously grateful to my wife for this gift. It has been an incredible advantage for me all my life, particularly with the time I spend with my kids. If one solution fails to convince my kids, I know another one will. It is when I know that the energy levels of my patience never fails to run out that I am going to succeed. It is when I remain in this concept of patience, that the situation transforms itself from darkness to brightness, from lethargy to enthusiasm from fear to optimism. When I believe that my patience will sustain me till the end, I know that I can now look forward to experiencing a partnership based on love, trust and joy.
The quality of patience does not come programmed in our genes. It is how you programme yourself to learning how to increase your energy levels of patience. We are so accustomed to getting things done here and now that we care little to notice how the energy levels of our patience drastically drops and virtually dries up in due course of time. Apparently, the victims of each situation that we encounter thereafter may unfortunately be our very own kids, among others. And because the energy levels of our patience has dried up, we end up reacting and our naive children bear the wounds of our callous parenting or teaching paradigms.
An incident with a friend sometime ago painfully reminded me of the need to honour patience.
During our schooling days we often frequented a Scottish cemetery, which was popular for its orchard of mangoes and a scenic pond. It had become our favourite haunt in the summers. Our visits were a weekly affair and though I didn’t know how to swim, I would sit on the banks of the pond relishing on the mangoes and watching my friends’ show-off their swimming skills. Mike, a class V student had accompanied us on one such visit. He didn’t know how to swim. But his urge to experience the cool waters on a scorching day in May, was not going to dampen his spirits from taking on the challenge. Our repeated requests asking him not to take to the waters had no effect. He was impatient and not willing to learn how to swim, before setting out to tame the undercurrents of water. He drowned and a blanket of anguish fell upon each one of us. I still remember that shocking incident. Our visits instantly culminated and a lesson immediately learnt. My friend paid with his life because he failed to honour patience.
The more you honour patience, the more you are programming and acclimatizing yourself to the people and the situations around you. Remember that our children are the most frequented contacts to our programming and acclimatization. They absorb behaviours, attitude, language and reactions every waking minute of their lives. They are going to behave exactly how you would behave and speak with them. You portray a patient attitude and they are going to learn to respect that and honour it. They are going to react less and act more. They are going to learn how to partner every situation based on love, trust and joy.
I find my youngest son amazing. He can sit patiently for hours together artistically sketching racer bikes. And mind you, he is exceptionally good at it. If he can draw so well at this age, I sometimes wonder, what would his talent be like after a couple of years? Fabulous is what I would speculatively term it; only if, he could still maintain his quality of patience.
Patience is the mother of all moral values and the foundation on which, we need to build our children’s moral principles to control and influence their behaviour. As rightly said “…if you want something badly, you can achieve it. It may take PATIENCE, very hard work, a real struggle, and a long time; but it can be done. That much faith is a pre-requisite of any understanding, artistic or otherwise.”
noelmanuel@rediffmail.com
The writer is the Coordinator of the Northeast Region (Poetry Society of India) and Life Member of the Poetry Society of India. Journalist and Correspondent Eastern Panorama (News Magazine of the Northeast) and also a Phonetics Teacher.
